
m n iiH unu iii i iii i i mwi irl 
i> w i B i iiiiituuiruiHii.i i LMiiuuiiLM » »iuuiu j WHwuwiiwiwwiiiiriWi>iinMO.mHMiiitri i rnw M iiria i a i'(MiiLi i " 



i 



. . 



MAR ■/ -^»- 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No.._- 

Shelf.„JL.Bj/6vf 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



^p piiee Bora a. ^mitj) 

THE CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE. i6mo,^i.oo. 



In Collaboration with Mrs. Wiggin. 

THE STORY HOUR. A Book for the Home and 
Kinderccaiten. Illustrated- i6mo, $i.oo. 

CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. A Book of Nursery Logic. 
i6mo, $i.oo. 

THE REPUBLIC OF CHILDHOOD. In three vol- 
umes, each, i6mo, ?r.oo. 
I. FROEBEL'S GIFTS. 
II. FROEBEL'S OCCUPATIONS. 

III. KINDERGARTEN PRI NCI PLES AND PRAC- 
TICE. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE 
FUTURE 



NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH 

joint author with kate douglas wiggin of " the republic 

of childhood," " the story hour," and 

"children's rights" 



" The will of the present is the key to the future, 
and moral character is eternal destiny." 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 



.** 



^ 



A^ 



^^1a- 










25do 



COPYRIGHT, 1898 

BY NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



TO 

A MOTHER OF THE PRESENT 

FROM 

A CHILD OF THE PAST 



CONTENTS 1 

PAGE 

The Study of Children 1 

Training for Parenthood ... .20 

The Charm of the Lily 31 

The Priestly Office 41 

Sand and the Children 57 

A Dumb Devil 67 

An Unwalled City 76 

Perilous Times ....... 85 

A Deviser of Mischiefs 92 

" Tell me a Story " 101 

The Authentic in Kindergarten Training .^ 114 

The Gospel of Work 127 

The Brotherhood of Saint Tumbler . . 143 
The Kindergarten in Neighborhood Work 158 

1 Many of the above essays first appeared in The Out- 
look and in Table Talk, and are here reprinted by the kind 
permission of the editors. Most of them are considerably 
extended from their orig-inal form, while others have been 
written for this volume. 



THE CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

*' Love the child, and he will reveal himself to you." 

When a thoughtful child was asked one 
day why a certain tree in the garden was so 
crooked, he responded that he "s'posed 
somebody must have stepped on it when it 
was a little fellow." The answer was so 
philosophic, so unexpectedly rich in its in- 
sight into causes, that the questioner may 
well be pardoned if he was somewhat dis- 
mayed, and regarded his companion as an- 
other example of the " seers blest," 

" In whom those truths do rest 
Which we are toiling all our lives to find." 

It was but a chance remark, one of those 
wise things which children often surprise us 
by saying, but you remember it was the bow 



2 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

drawn at a venture that slew the great King 
Ahab. Not trees alone are bent and twisted 
in their growing by carelessness and igno- 
rance, and many a distorted human life at- 
tests the truth of the child's saying. 

It is only another proof of the infinite 
scope of the Divine plan that such countless 
myriads of human beings can be born into 
the world, all built on the same general lines, 
and yet differing so widely one from another 
as to need for their best development climates 
and training as dissimilar as do the polar 
bear and the bird of paradise. Through 
carelessness, through ignorance, through 
dullness — sometimes, indeed, through sheer 
wickedness — many children are no better 
understood by their parents than if they 
were natives of another planet. Truth to 
tell, they often appear to many of us to be 
strangers and foreigners, though how the 
tiny creatures, born of our own flesh and 
blood, and nurtured at our hearthstones, can 
so differ fi-om one another and from their 
parents is a problem to puzzle the wisest. 



THE STUDY OF CHILDBEN 3 

Yet, whether this be due to heredity, to pre- 
natal influences, or to the old, old theory of 
the transmigration of souls, the facts are 
there, as solid as the hills themselves. Every 
child differs from every other child as much 
as one star differeth from another star in 
glory, and not until this is understood, and 
training is given to suit the particular case, 
can we be sure that the budding human 
life will not be killed, bent, or stunted by 
misapplied force. Because the father was 
well brought up by a particular system, there 
is no reason to suppose that it will succeed 
with the son; because the eldest daughter 
has flourished under certain discipline, we 
need not therefore conclude that it will fit 
the youngest equally well. The polar bear 
must be fed on something besides seeds and 
fruits if he is to be a model of his kind, and 
the bird of paradise will pine away before he 
will reconcile himself to a diet of raw flesh. 
We cannot devise a plan of education 
suited to the normal child, and then wind 
up our own little one and "fix him," as 



4 THE STUDY OF GHILBEEN 

Richter says, "exactly as if he were an 
astronomical, liundred-yeared chronometer 
warranted to show the hours and positions 
of the planets quite accurately long after 
our death." We cannot do this, for proba- 
bly he is not a normal child. He may be 
an average one, but that is quite a different 
thing, and it is our first and highest busi- 
ness in life to find out his personal equation 
as far as we may, — that is, to discover how 
near he comes to the standard in one direc- 
tion, how far he overlaps it in another, 
whether he needs free rein here, curbing 
there, encouragement in one line, or reproof 
in a second. True, parents and teachers 
have always known this to be necessary, but 
knowing one's duty is not synonymous with 
performing it, on this planet at any rate. 

The mother's intuition in regard to her 
child is, of course, a great help toward 
understanding him, though intuition is ob- 
viously not enough for this line of work ; it 
needs to be supplemented by thought and 
study, by careful observation and record. 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 5 

Child-study as a science is the newest of 
new things, in this country at least, — only 
about ten years old as yet in any distinct 
and systematic form, although Dr. Stanley 
Hall began his public work in this direction 
in 1880. When we reflect, however, that 
1870 is the Anno Domini of educational 
development in most countries, and that 
the first chair of j^edagogics in any of our 
colleges and universities was established 
little more than a decade ago, we cannot 
wonder that the allied sciences should have 
been somewhat slow in gaining public 
recognition. Before 1880, Perez in France, 
Preyer in Germany, Darwin in England, 
with other less known European scientists, 
had begun to make careful observations of 
children on various lines, and their books 
on the subject are of much value. No doubt 
they helped to awaken public interest in 
the subject in the United States, though on 
the whole, as one of the leaders in the move- 
ment has said, " child-study is, in a peculiar 
sense, American." 



6 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

Perez's "First Three Years of Child- 
hood" and Preyer's "The Infant Mind" 
are wonderful records of infant develop- 
ment, and by similar labors many mothers 
might become invaluable helpers in the gen- 
eral work, as well as serve their own inter- 
ests meantime, by gaining a fuller compre- 
hension of their children. 

Friedrich Froebel, the father of child- 
study, as early as 1841 desired mothers to 
record in writing the most important facts 
about each separate child. " It seems to 
me most necessary," he said, " for the com- 
prehension and for the true treatment of 
child-nature, that such observations should 
be made public from time to time, in order 
that children may become better and better 
understood in their manifestations, and may 
therefore be more rightly treated, and that 
true care and observation of unsophisticated 
childhood may ever increase." 

" Life books " according to Froebel's sug- 
gestions have been kept of late years by 
many mothers, and if all observations are 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 7 

recorded while still fresh, and effort is made 
that they shall be thoroughly impartial, they 
can but be of inestimable worth to the 
child, to the mother, and perhaps, inciden- 
tally, to science. In turning the pages of a 
book of this kind, one is struck, possibly, 
by the frequent manifestation of such and 
such a disagreeable trait, not a pleasant 
thing for a fond parent to note, but much 
more pleasant to discover now, when there 
is some hope of correcting it, than to have 
it to struggle with by and. by when it has 
grown a giant in strength. Again, we may 
note early tendencies in some specific direc- 
tion, literary, musical, artistic, mechanical, 
which are of great service in shaping the 
child's future career ; or, results following 
well-intentioned discipline which show it to 
have been entirely mistaken. 

Careful records of the physical develop- 
ment of the child, his growth in height and 
weight, his body girths at different ages, the 
order in which his muscular movements and 
their coordinations appear, are frequently 



THE STUDY OF CHILBBEN 

of special value to the family physician, and 
also sometimes serve to indicate cominjr ill- 
ness, or some lurking trouble which, though 
plainly shown by stoppage of growth or loss 
of weight, may not for a long time declare 
itself in any other manner. The unfold- 
ing of the senses in their order, the pro- 
gressive manifestations of the emotions, the 
earliest signs of intellectual life, the devel- 
opment of language, — all these afford rich 
fields for observation. Mothers who are 
in doubt as to just what and how to ob- 
serve will find great helj) in Mrs. Felix 
Adler's little hand-book, " Hints for the 
Scientific Observation and Study of Chil- 
dren," in Mrs. E. K. Jackman's " Outlines 
for Child - Study," in the Topical Syllabi 
sent out from Clark University, and those 
issued by the various associations and maga- 
zines devoted to the subject, while they may 
also get some valuable ideas from Professor 
A. D. Cromwell's " Practical Child-Study." 
It need not be supposed that a creature 
thus carefully observed is held under a micro- 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 9 

scope for tlie process, like some rare insect 
or botanical specimen. The essence of the 
observation is that the subject shall be quite 
unconscious that he is being watched. Of 
course, as an infant he knows nothing of the 
record made, and as he grows older it is 
desirable that he should still be kept igno- 
rant in regard to it. Undoubtedly it is a 
difficult task to make the observations care- 
fully, veraciously, impartially, and still more 
difficult to record them before they become 
dim and uncertain. It would obviously be 
impossible for an ignorant woman to make 
observations with scientific method and dis- 
crimination ; it would be still more out of 
the question for the unfortunate mother 
whose nurslings must be left to the care of 
others while she earns their bread away 
from home, or for that wretched martyr of 
the sweating-shops who toils all day and far 
into the night to keep the breath of life in 
the beings whom she has brought into the 
world. 

And here is just the opportunity of all 



10 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

others where women may lend a helping 
hand to one another. If you are so blessed 
as to hold the true position of a mother and 
be the constant companion of your child, 
you may perhaps, by observing and record- 
ing his every manifestation, be of the great- 
est service in the future to some neglected 
little one whom you never saw and never 
will see. Whoever has learned to under- 
stand one child thoroughly, whoever has 
faithfully recorded, as far as she was able 
to note them, each step in his physical and 
psychical development, has been a benefac- 
tor to all children, if her record is so made 
as to be intelligible to others. " It is prob- 
able," says Sully, " that inquiries into the 
beginnings of human culture, the origin of 
language, of primitive ideas and institutions, 
might derive much more help than they 
have hitherto from a close scrutiny of the 
events of childhood." 

If this is so, how immeasurably may the 
education of the future, physical, mental, 
and moral, gain by the help of intelligent 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 11 

women if tliey once set themselves thor- 
oughly to understand the children God has 
given them. 

But if this study is to accomplish all 
that its devotees are prophesying, not mo- 
thers only, but physicians and teachers must 
work together in harmony. The observation 
of children must not cease at the threshold 
of kindergarten and school, for here some 
of the worst offenses against these little ones 
have been committed. 

Take the school-room itself and discover 
to your dismay how many ailments may be 
traced directly to overheating, overcrowd- 
ing, faulty ventilation, bad drainage, and 
defective lighting. Ask yourself if it is 
not a disgrace to civilization that maladies 
should exist, familiarly known and spoken 
of as "school-bred diseases"? Ought we 
not to blush when we seat our children, or 
those of anybody else, on a bench or at a 
desk where it is impossible to work with the 
body in a proper position ? Ought we to 
allow for a moment in our schools any sys- 



12 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

tern of writing which is likely to produce 
curvature of the spine, and which does pro- 
duce it in a large number of cases ? Have 
we not cause to be ashamed if we force chil- 
dren by law to attend the public schools, 
and then provide them with books so badly 
printed that they permanently injure the 
eyes? 

These are some of the indictments as to 
books and school-rooms. Let us see how we 
may be judged when we consider school cur- 
ricula and systems of management. Note, 
of course, that all of these are not by any 
means bad, many of them in fact being well 
suited to some children, but the danger in 
their application lies in that they are not 
suited to all. The great fault in our school 
system is that we try to educate pupils in 
battalions. We do not individualize suffi- 
ciently, and the one sweeping reform which 
we hope that child-study may make, if it 
does nothing else, is to open people's eyes to 
the fact that we cannot grow children as 
we can string-beans, planting them at ex- 



THE STUDY OF CHILBREN 13 

actly the same depth, furnishing them with 
the same fertilizers, and jiroviding them 
on the same day with twelve dozen dozen 
bean-poles to run on, all of the same length 
and diameter, and stuck straight into the 
ground at rigidly mathematical intervals. 

In many of the French and German pub- 
lic schools careful physical measurements 
are always made and recorded when the 
child enters, are periodically renewed, and 
examined regularly by a physician. The 
sight and hearing are also tested, and advice 
is given to the parents if anything is found 
amiss. The child in the French primary 
school also keeps a copy-book (cahier men- 
suel'), in which once every month he writes 
out his work for the day. He is usually 
freshly washed and dressed for this grand 
occasion, and makes his notes in his very 
best style, knowing that they will be filed 
away as a record of his progress. Persons 
interested in the child's mental and physi- 
cal development can therefore turn to these 
books at any time and know quite clearly 
where he stands. 



14 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

These physical measurements have lately 
been begun in some schools in this country, 
and tests of the relative motor-abilities of 
children, their fatigue-points, etc., have been 
undertaken, while the testing of the senses 
is now quite common. 

It is objected by those who have no sym- 
pathy with child-study that the teacher who 
pursues such investigations will have little 
time left for instruction. Push the argu- 
ment to its extreme and grant the suppo- 
sition, and it may be replied that a little 
instruction given under proper conditions 
to a child whose mental and physical pecu- 
liarities are thoroughly known is vastly bet- 
ter than hours spent, for instance, in giving 
oral science-lessons across a large room to 
a boy who is two thirds deaf, or a whole 
year's blackboard work in numbers to one 
too near-sighted to see a foot beyond his 
desk. This is what the Spaniards call 
" preaching in the desert," and to prove 
that it must be an elocutionary exercise 
much practiced in this country, well-attested 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 15 

fiofures can be furnished to show that be- 
tween one fifth and one fourth of all the 
pupils in our public schools have defective 
hearing, and in at least one city of the 
United States fifty per cent, of the five 
thousand school-children were found to have 
defective vision. 

Numbers of so-called "dull" and "back- 
ward " pupils are such only because of their 
impaired senses ; and when this is recog- 
nized, a physician's advice obtained, and 
conditions changed to meet their needs, they 
become as bright as others. Many of the 
school records of such cases are intensely 
pathetic in the glimpses they give of the 
long and bitter suffering which these mis- 
understood human creatures must have en- 
dured before the new science came to their 
aid. 

Not defective children alone, however, 
suffer from bad school methods, for which, 
by the way, we are more to blame than the 
teachers. It is well known that a nervously 
overwrought child, either in school or at 



16 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

home, becomes weak-willed and vacillating, 
and that mental excitement and strain, such 
as are caused by high-pressure examinations 
and rigid marking, are marvelous producers 
of chorea and hysteria. Continued over- 
exertion in early years means weakened pos- 
sibilities in adult life. Forcing a child pre- 
maturely into the conventional studies of 
the school may cause arrested development ; 
and, finally, out-of-school study, so univer- 
sally required, is most injurious in the brain- 
weariness and loss of sleep it occasions. 
A fine, strong, well-balanced child can, it 
is true, go through almost any system of 
education and come out unscathed, but how 
about those who are mentally, physically, 
or morally handicapped for the ordeal ? Is 
it our desire that " even the least of these 
little ones shall perish " ? 

If the mother could put into the teacher's 
hands when she brought her child to school 
a brief summary of his threefold develop- 
ment for the first six years of life, making 
particular mention of his habits, disposition, 



THE STUDY OF CHILDEEN 17 

and defects ; if the teacher could supplement 
this bj a series of questions, such as are used 
in some parts of Germany, to determine 
roughly the contents of the mind before be- 
ginning regular instruction — if these two 
things could always be done, there would be 
a good working basis on which to found edu- 
cation. Physical measui-ements made in the 
school, sense-tests, etc., would follow, and the 
teacher besides recording them would also 
keep a record of the pupil along the mental 
and moral lines. With these in hand, what 
an insight into individual peculiarities would 
be gained, how much more wisely and sym- 
pathetically children would be dealt with, 
how much more definite the work would 
be, and how close and warm would become 
the relations between teacher and taught! 
It will be objected that no living man or 
woman could do this work for a class of 
sixty members or more save in the sketchi- 
est way. Very true, and when this truth 
has once sunk deep enough into the minds 
and hearts of thinking people, the difficulty 
will doubtless be seen and removed. 



18 THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 

It Is along all these lines that the help of 
women is urgently needed. If the women's 
clubs of this country, now so strong in num- 
bers, so vigorous and influential, would de- 
vote themselves for a time absolutely and 
entirely to the study of children and their 
needs, to the working children, the pauper 
children, the feeble-minded and epileptic, 
the neglected and truant, the delinquent ; 
if they would investigate school hygiene 
and architecture, school-bred diseases, kin- 
dergarten work, its defects and virtues ; 
if they would study normal as well as ab- 
normal children in order to know what train- 
ing each should rightfully receive, what a 
wonderful stimulus would be given to educa- 
tion ! 

In urging upon women subjects connected 
with child-study for investigation and discus- 
sion, it is not to be understood that general 
culture is therefore undervalued, or a wide 
knowledge of art, literature, music, philoso- 
phy, and science decried. All these things 
are undoubtedly necessary to full human 



THE STUDY OF CHILDREN 19 

development; but the children of the world 
are in the direct and particular charge of 
the women of the world, and this charge 
must not be neglected, though all else be 
laid aside and forgotten. 



TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 

" It 's a great pity to see so many people without any 
children to educate them." 

Me. Herbert Spencer, in liis volume 
on Education, published about thirty years 
ago, remarked that the training of that day, 
both in home and school, seemed best fitted 
to a race of celibates, and jiredicted that 
the philosopher of the future, pondering on 
the educational records of our time, would 
greatly marvel at the apparent absence of 
all preparation for the future duties and 
responsibilities of parenthood. 

That this is still measurably true there 
can be no doubt, though much improvement 
in this direction has been made in the edu- 
cation of women, at least, in the last twenty 
years. The whole matter seems so perfectly 
clear when once it is forcibly presented that 
one wonders how it could ever have been 



TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 21 

passed over or neglected. Were the duties 
of parenthood only " remote contingencies," 
as Mr. Spencer says, it would, perhaps, be 
wise not to spend much time in preparation 
for them ; but as they are constantly as- 
sumed, why not give them some considera- 
tion in the educational plan ? The training 
required would not be absolutely useless 
should its subject live and die a celibate. 
Spending years in the patient study of min- 
ing when your future career is to be that of 
an aeronaut might seem, indeed, a fruitless 
expenditure of labor ; but the parental vir- 
tues can never be out of place, however life 
may shape itself, for they are such as belong 
to the well-rounded, well-developed char- 
acter. 

We cannot entirely rely upon the parental 
instinct in this matter, be it ever so strong 
and pure. Although it may be trusted in 
the normal human being so far as love and 
protection are concerned, the rearing of 
children in our complex modern civilization 
is so delicate and difficult a matter as to 



22 TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 
necessitate the development of "blind rea- 
son " into a higher faculty which shall see 
clear-eyed the pathway it must tread. If the 
training is to be given, then the earlier be- 
gun the better, since it is not directing the 
energies into a special channel, but rather a 
broadening and strengthening of the whole 
nature. 

All roads proverbially lead to Rome, and 
consideration of this subject brings us in- 
evitably to the kindergarten and what it 
does in training the future parent. As well 
try to write a story without a first sentence, 
as well attempt to frame a melody without 
an opening bar, as to omit the kindergarten 
when considering preparation for life in any 
phase. It is there, and it cannot be ignored ; 
the story cannot be written nor the melody 
composed till the beginning is made. 

You smile at the idea of cultivating the 
parental virtues in a tiny creature hardly 
old enough to realize his own personality ; 
and it would indeed be absurd if the tiny 
creature did not clearly show you, in his 



TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 23 
unconscious plays, that the deep, indwelling 
father, mother instinct is already there. The 
kindergarten, through its marvelous system 
of songs and games, addresses this instinct 
from the very beginning. The finger-songs 
commonly show three generations in sweet 
relation, — the grandmother and grand- 
father, the good mother, the kind father, 
and the little child close beside them ; and 
many of the representations of animal life 
deal with the nurture and wise care of the 
young. 

If a bird game is being played, one par- 
ent broods the younglings in the nest, the 
other flies over wood and field in search of 
their food, while both have united in gather- 
ing materials for the family home. When 
the little ones are fully feathered, the par- 
ents carefully teach them to fly, and abun- 
dant stories aud poems further illustrate the 
lesson taught. The trade games — carpen- 
ter, cooper, blacksmith, whatever they may 
be — not only inculcate the duty of faithful 
labor, but show that its fruits should not 



24 TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 
be spent on self alone. " For wife and 
children dear at home, I 'm toiling all day 
long," says the song, and the child swings 
his hammer lustily, feeling that he is work- 
ing for his dear ones as well as for himself. 

Since he cannot govern others who has 
never learned to rule his own sjDirit, the kin- 
dergarten strives to teach self-government, 
knowing it to be a vital element of character. 
It aims to teach, by methods quite within 
the child's grasp, the inexorable relation of 
cause and effect, and shows him simply that 
whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap. It begins to give him an understand- 
ing of the interdependence of all life, and 
points out to him that his actions are to be 
considered not only in regard to his own wel- 
fare, but as to the way in which they affect 
others. It further cultivates such virtues as 
self-respect and perseverance, as well as a 
willingness to help in bearing the burdens 
of the weak. 

And what does the future parent need 
more than a strong feeling of the sacredness 



TRAINING FOB PARENTHOOD 25 
of family life and the importance of wise 
care of the young ; a knowledge of the value 
of labor and the proper use of its rewards ; 
a conviction that every deed, good or evil, 
must have its consequence ; and a well- 
governed spirit realizing relationship to the 
world ? 

Alas ! many more things are required, 
but we need not be discouraged, for the 
kindergarten will aid in bringing them into 
being. 

Does the parent we are training need a 
stock of that patience which is "a good 
root," an unfailing store of love, and a fer- 
vor of spiritual life which shall warm every 
shivering soul it touches ? Ah, these are 
the product of years of noble living ; but the 
kindergarten can breathe around the child- 
ish life so soft and gentle an atmosphere 
that the virtues which God has implanted 
in every human heart must needs wake and 
stir and struggle upward toward the light. 

A wonderful educational idea, the kinder- 
garten, you say. Yes, truly, a revelation of 



26 TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 

strength and beauty. A blessed place where . 
life can be so nourished ! A blessed place 
indeed — one of the gateways to the millen- 
nium ! Dwell therein long enough, and you 
may not dare to doubt it. 

You may think what is claimed for Froe- 
bel's system here the effervescence of en- 
thusiasm, but I speak that I do know, and 
from the standpoint of experience. If en- 
thusiasm can live and grow and wax ever 
stronger through years of practical work 
and trial, then it would seem, even to the 
prejudiced observer, that there must be 
good ground for it to grow in. Undoubt- 
edly there are kindergartens and kindergar- 
tens ; the spirit is not the same in all of 
them ; but it is no discredit to the heavenly 
rectitude of the compass if one has never 
learned to steer one's ship by it. 

Yet I am not such a fanatic as to claim 
that all the noble qualities mentioned can 
be fully developed in the kindergarten. I 
only say that the climate thereof is a genial 
one, where virtues bud as in their native 



TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 27 

air, and that if tlie home influences are fa- 
vorable, and the succeeding gardener a wise 
one, the little plant can but keep on urging 
toward the sun. 

The school as commonly conducted is not 
now, and has not been in the past, especially 
favorable to the development of the virtues 
needed by the future parent. Law has com- 
monly been imposed from without, rather 
than developed from within, and the system 
of credits and marking has fostered a greedy 
spirit of emulation, rather than respect for 
work for the work's sake and a willingness 
to aid the weaker brother. That this has 
not been true of all schools goes without 
saying, and meantime a leaven is working 
which will in time change these matters. 
May I be pardoned if I suggest that pos- 
sibly the kindergarten is this leaven, and 
that its greatest claim to consideration in 
the future may, perhaps, be found to lie in 
the influence it has exerted on higher edu- 
cation ? 

Nowadays, when that higher education is 



28 TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 

completed, the young woman frequently pur- 
sues some special course or courses', all emi- 
nently practical and useful in future mother- 
hood, should she attain unto that dignity. 
She goes to a cooking-school, she takes up 
the scientific study of dressmaking, she at- 
tends lectures on Housekeeping as a Liberal 
Art, on Sanitation and Plumbing, on First 
Aid to the Injured, etc. She studies the 
treatment of the sick and the care of inva- 
lids, or, perhaps best of all, since all these 
things may be added unto it, she takes a 
complete course of kindergarten training. 
A kindergarten training-school is the only 
place where a young woman can get a spe- 
cific preparation for motherhood. During 
the year or two of study required, the pupil 
will not only gain a fund of information 
regarding the wise treatment of infants and 
young children, but by daily practice, fre- 
quently among the poorer classes, will add 
to her instinctive tenderness and sympathy 
the wisdom, good judgment, firmness, self- 
restraint, and devotion to ultimate ideals 



TRAINING FOE PARENTHOOD 29 
needed by the true mother. Nor need she 
fear, be she an absolutely predestinate spin- 
ster, that any of this work will be wasted ; 
for, failing offspring of her own, there is no 
dearth of the world's forsaken children who 
hunger and thirst for her loving services. 

And what is the future father doing mean- 
time ? Is he preparing for his possible re- 
sponsibilities ? is he strengthening his shoul- 
ders for the burdens which may some time 
be laid upon them ? or is one parent, if that 
be a good one, supposed to be enough in a 
family ? 

With all the educational agencies at our 
command, could we produce well - rounded 
characters, self -controlled, self-governing, 
abounding in love and in aspiration toward 
the ideal, convinced with heart-conviction of 
the responsibility of each to all and all to 
God — could we do all this, nor neglect the 
cultivation of the imagination and the rea- 
son, nor that knowledge which is gained from 
books, we should produce the ideal parent, 
who is after all the ideal human being. But 



30 TRAINING FOR PARENTHOOD 
none of these things may be done without 
the co(5peration of the ideal home ; and the 
ideal home is not yet, nor will be, until 
some seventh wave of humanity has rolled 
the race onward, far beyond its present halt- 
ing-place. 



THE CHARM OF THE LILY 

" He who takes the child by the hand takes the mother 
by the heart." 

Theke is a story somewhere of a humble 
woman who found on her table one day a 
fair white lily in a sparkling crystal vase. 
She dwelt with rapture on the purity of the 
flower and the exquisite lines of the cup that 
held it, but noting that the light from the 
dusty window illumined it but faintly, she 
hastened to wash the glass. The sun then 
streamed bravely in through the brilliant 
panes and showed only too plainly the con- 
dition of the floor. This remedied, the walls 
begged for attention, and the charm of the 
lily worked until the whole house was set in 
fairest order. 

Has not the kindergarten been a lily 
whose perfume and beauty have been a 
magic spell working here, working there, 



32 THE CHARM OF THE LILY 

changing, beautifying everywhere ? At first 
we thought of Froebel's principles as applied 
merely to babies of three to six years, and 
were absorbed in their beauty, their adapta- 
tion to childhood, their unerring adjustment 
of means to ends. Then, as we studied 
and thought and strove to clear away all 
obstruction between us and the light, the 
lily shone revealed in greater fairness, and 
we knew that its charm had only half been 
felt by us at first. What it accomplished 
for babies showed us what might be done for 
older children, for young girls, and finally 
for the home and for the j)arents. 

So as an outgrowth of Froebel's principles 
kitchen-gardens, housekeepers' classes, and 
sewing-schools were started ; boys' clubs and 
libraries, evening classes in handiwork of 
various kinds begun ; training-schools for 
kindergartners opened, and the work for 
young people moved on rapidly. But by and 
by we found that it was not enough to go 
forward in a straight line, nor even to 
broaden out like the sides of a trianaie as we 



THE CHABM OF THE LILY 33 

progressed ; a backward reach was also neces- 
sary, or, better still, a rotary motion, " unity 
for the centre, diversity for the circumfer- 
ence," rippling out in ever-widening circles. 

We found that, after all, we knew very 
little about the child if we did not also know 
his environment, his home, and his family. 
When we had begun to make acquaintance 
with these, we saw at once that the highest 
benefits of the kindergarten could never be 
felt by the child unless there was a certain 
amount of coiaperation between parents and 
kindergartner, and unless there was some 
degree of intelligent comprehension in the 
home of what the kindergarten was trying 
to accomplish. 

Miss Emily Shirreff, late President of the 
London Froebel Society, very wisely said 
in a recent address : " At a later period a 
school may be better or worse than the home, 
and the boy or girl may realize the differ- 
ence and bear it without serious loss ; but 
the little ones are yet too strange to this 
wonderful world to understand anything. 



34 THE CHAEM OF THE LILY 

They feel spiritual influences as they feel 
the sunshine or the cold ; but the natural 
growth and expansion of their being is ar- 
rested if, as they pass from kindergarten to 
home, they pass from one system of manage- 
ment to another ; and change becomes- moral 
waste." 

This was instinctively felt by the thought- 
ful kindergartner, and instinct became in- 
sight as meditation and experience brought 
her closer to the heart of Froebel's princi- 
ples. 

Do not suppose for a moment that utter 
lack of sympathy between mother and kin- 
dergartner and dense ignorance of the aims 
of the work were, or are, confined to the 
poorer classes and to the homes whence 
come the children of the charity kinder- 
gartens. Women are women, you know, in 
every rank of society, and very probably 
there are as many shallow, weak, careless, 
stupid, morally obtuse mothers among the 
rich as among the poor. It is to be sup- 
posed that the Lord sends them offspring as 



THE CHARM OF THE LILY 85 

an aid in their salvation, and doubtless the 
idea is a good one, though the practical 
working of it is rather hard on the children. 

The poor mother often sends her child to 
the kindergarten to get him " off the street," 
as she says ; the well-to-do mother frequently 
does the same thing to have him out of her 
way for a time, and cheerfully confesses her 
motive. Neither parent, perhaps, really be- 
lieves that the kindergarten has the least 
moral or intellectual influence upon her 
child, but she knows him to be safe, shel- 
tered, amused, and happy for a certain num- 
ber of hours each day, and in moments of 
discouragement the kindergartner is glad 
that she acknowledges even this. 

One would not wish to be intolerant of the 
ignorance on educational subjects among the 
rich and well-to-do, although the faults of 
people who ought to know better are always 
additionally exasperating : but the mothers 
of the educated classes are commonly more 
anxious to force their children than are the 
'ignorant ones, and more vociferous as to 



36 THE CHARM OF THE LILY 

the wickedness of not teaching them to read 
under six years. Add to this that they quite 
frequently forbid their little ones to do any 
clay modeling lest they soil their hands and 
aprons ; protest against their crawling on the 
floor as caterpillars, or leaping about as 
frogs, lest they wear out their clothing ; and 
— crowning absurdity ! — often decline to 
send their children to kindergarten at all, 
" if that Mrs. Thingumbob's children are 
allowed to come, too." 

Dear high-caste mothers (in a land where 
no caste is supposed to exist), forgive me ! I 
know most of you are saints in the bud, and 
some of you have even begun to blossom. I 
know that many of you are thoughtful, ear- 
nest, intelligent, and conscientious, but a few 
drops of acid long ago entered into my blood 
when the wicked sisters among you began to 
checkmate the well-intentioned kindergart- 
ner, and though the defects I have men- 
tioned are probably only the shadow-side of 
your virtues, yet the acid is still in my veins, 
and it will work out now and then. And do 



THE CHARM OF THE LILY 37 

not think that I make little of the ignorance, 
the carelessness, the prejudice, the not infre- 
quent brutality of the mothers of the " other 
half." I know, I sadly recognize them all ; 
but are not such women something more 
forgivable, seeing that " they know not what 
they do " ? 

When, then, the wise kindergartner real- 
ized the want of connection between her 
little kingdom and the home, she felt that 
the parents must somehow be brought into 
sympathy with her plans, the general result 
of the existing conditions on the child's pro- 
gress being much like that of the far-famed 
frog who climbed eight feet up the well every 
day and slipped back seven every night. 

The thoughtful mother doubtless felt with 
equal keenness this disheartening condition 
of things, and the help she brought to the 
partial solution of the problem must not be 
ignored. 

As soon, however, as kindergartner and 
mother were thoroughly aroused to the neces- 
sity of cooperation, they began to cooperate 



38 THi: CHABM OF THE LILY 

a little, and the work immediately received 
an impetus in the right direction. It was 
never difficult to interest the mother, or even 
the elusive father, in the surface beauty 
of the kindergarten, the dainty work, the 
charming surroundings, the sweet singing, 
the harmonious movements, the evident 
hajDpiness. All these any bystander may 
see, but to persuade him to look below the 
surface and discover that they are merely 
outward and visible signs of inward and 
spiritual graces — ah, that is another matter ! 

Here and there, then, throughout the 
country, the kindergartners began to send 
special invitations to the parents to spend 
an hour or so with the children and watch 
them at their work and play. True, the 
parents had been told before that they would 
always be welcome at any time, but as " any 
time " is proverbially " no time," the invita- 
tions were seldom accepted. 

The mother who had never been quite 
able heretofore to believe that Mary made 
her charming inventions entirely by herself, 



THE CHAEM OF THE LILY 39 

now saw her producing them and absorbed in 
the joy of creation ; the one who had never 
thought of the kindergarten as anything but 
play, was amazed at the knowledge of math- 
ematics shown by Johnnie as he folded his 
papers and built with his blocks ; while both 
gained some valuable new information as 
to the real inner nature of their little ones, 
as they watched the progress of the games. 
The kindergartners gave a word of expla- 
nation occasionally as they found time, or 
moved aside a moment for a bit of quiet 
talk about the reasons for this and that ; 
but these morsels of information were soon 
felt to be far from satisfying, and all 
thoughtful mothers united in a desire for a 
better understanding of the underlying prin- 
ciples of Froebel's system. 

The kindergartners were generally young, 
frequently inexperienced, and had they 
trusted to their own knowledge alone, would 
have felt themselves entirely unfitted to 
serve as guides in education to those happy 
women upon whom the privilege of mother- 



40 THE CHARM OF THE LILY 

hood had been conferred, and who therefore 
had attained to a kind of spiritual dignity 
and instinctive wisdom. Yet they were en- 
thusiasts, as all followers of Froebel must 
be of necessity, and they knew beyond doubt 
that the study of the kindergarten would 
train the mother-instinct into insight ; would 
give higher ideals of discipline and of the 
value of love and reverence in the moral 
training of the child ; would teach the neces- 
sity of harmonious purpose throughout the 
entire scheme of education ; would serve as 
a gateway to wider culture ; and finally that 
the communion of so many earnest women 
would kindle courage and enthusiasm into a 
brighter flame in every heart. 

And so, indeed, it has proved wherever 
mothers' meetings, mothers' classes, mothers' 
conferences, among rich and poor and high 
and low, have been carried on according to 
Froebel's principles ; and we who believe in 
the kindergarten are not altogether sure that 
this, its latest offspring, may not, like the 
name of Abou ben Adhem, lead all the rest. 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

" Women should make of their educational calling' a 
priestly office." 

It is now about sixty years since Frie- 
dricli Froebel, the great benefactor of child- 
hood, began to preach a truth of which he 
had long been convinced, namely, that " all 
school education was yet without a proper 
initial foundation, and that, therefore, until 
the education of the nursery was reformed, 
nothing solid and worthy could be attained. 
The necessity for training intelligent, capa- 
ble mothers occupied his mind, and the 
importance of the education of childhood's 
earliest years became more evident to him 
than ever before." 

It was in 1835 that his idea of a mission 
to women may be said to have definitely 
taken shape, and about this time he became 
so disheartened with the slow progress of his 



42 THE PBIESTLY OFFICE 

educational ideas in Germany that he seri- 
ously thought of emigrating to the United 
States to establish his system in a new coun- 
try, presumably less fettered by convention, 
prejudice, and tradition. He was finally 
obliged to relinquish this plan, and to strug- 
gle on to the end in his own land amid 
hardships and discouragements such as only 
a divine enthusiasm could have endured. 
Froebel could not come to us himself, but no 
bars of infirmity or chains of circumstance 
were round his thoughts, and when he sent 
them forth, they winged their way to the 
country from which he hoped so much. 

It is difficult to say just where and when 
amons: us in America the first movement 
was be2:un toward that definite work for 
mothers in connection with the kindergar- 
ten, which Froebel preached so long and so 
earnestly, for when the seeds of certain 
principles are sown about the same time in 
many warm and generous hearts, it is prob- 
able that there will be an almost simul- 
taneous budding, growth, and flowering. 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 43 

First in every community came the kin- 
dergarten as developed for little children ; 
then the work extended its influence to older 
boys and girls ; next, training-schools for 
kindergartners were established, and soon 
these kindergartners felt that their best and 
most natural helper was the mother, and 
beckoned her to the magic circle. 

Such was the progress of the movement 
everywhere, and the pi^ieers have been so 
many, that one can hardly see the wood for 
the trees, though Miss Elizabeth Harrison, of 
Chicago, must always merit special mention 
as one of the earliest and most successful 
in this field. Her personal magnetism 
and great executive ability not only served 
her in organizing and setting in motion large 
mothers' classes under her immediate direc- 
tion, but she imj^ressed every one of the 
graduates from her training-school with the 
vital importance of the mother's cooperation 
and the necessity of securing it in the begin- 
ning as a prime factor in the success of her 
work. During the winter of 1892-93, four 



44 THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

hundred and fifty of the most intelligent 
women of Chicago were enrolled in Miss 
Harrison's central and branch classes, and 
so energetic, wide-awake, rapid, and vigorous 
is that community that doubtless the num- 
ber is increased tenfold by this time. 

A second renascence has begun in the his- 
tory of the world — there is a new revival 
of learning, differing somewhat from the 
first in that it is felt by women only. There 
is scarcely a self-respecting woman in our 
country to-day who does not either attend a 
class in something — no matter what — or 
conduct one herself. Eagerly, thirstily, 
they are everywhere drinking in deep 
draughts of information on dynamics, ther- 
apeutics, hieroglyphics, hydrostatics, mne- 
monics, Herbartianism, Platonic philosophy, 
zymotic diseases, and other abstruse subjects 
with strange and high-sounding names. A 
fellow kindergartner sat beside a pretty 
young woman i"n a car the other day, who 
looked modest and unassuming and quite 
like other people, and yet she was reading a 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 45 

pamphlet entitled " The Internal Relations 
and Taxonomy of the Archjean Terranes of 
Turkestan, with Notes on the Pre-Paleozoic 
Surface of the Island of Nova Zembla." 
My informant copied the title, promptly 
looking up all the hard words, and could 
not but throb with pride for her sex as she 
reflected that one member of it, at least, 
could read and enjoy this highly condensed 
■extract of literature. 

Here and there among these countless 
clubs and classes for self-improvement, a 
new subject for study has lately presented 
itself. It is new, it is useful, it is all- 
important, and it is deeply interesting to 
every human being, for it is the scientific 
study of childhood. " A child, an immortal 
being," as one of our wise kindergartners 
says, " is certainly as legitimate an object of 
respectful study as a starfish, or a microbe, 
or a plant. He is as important as a freshly 
exhumed hieroglyphic stone, or a bone of an 
extinct species, and is not he, ' the living 
poem,' worthy of as careful and concen- 



46 THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

trated thought as the masterpieces of litera- 
ture or the languages of foreign countries?" 

One cannot deny that these things are use- 
ful and legitimate objects of study, but the 
child in his heredity, his processes of devel- 
opment, his possibilities for good or evil, his 
relations to society, is supremely more im- 
portant ; and wherever that fact is recognized 
and wherever women have banded themselves 
together for the study of child-culture, it 
will be found, I think, that the kindergarten 
influence is behind the movement. 

This study of the " science of mother- 
hood," as Froebel calls it, may be greatly 
varied in scope and method, according as it 
is taken up by women of thought and culti- 
vation, or by the poor hard-working mothers, 
many of them very ignorant, many of them 
speaking but little English, who form the 
classes in the free kindergartens. To all 
women, however, rich or poor, wise or igno- 
rant, married or unmarried, the study can 
but bring added culture, added self-know- 
ledge, greater reverence, thoughtf ulness, and 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 47 

tenderness, deeper feeling of responsibility, 
and wider sense of human relationships. 

Each kindei'gartner or leader in the child- 
study clubs would naturally conduct her 
classes according to her own mental bias 
and the trend of her strongest moral convic- 
tions, but any course for cultivated women 
embraces all, or the greater part, of the fol- 
lowing subjects : — 

. 1. The theory of child-culture as found 
in Froebel's " Mutter und Kose-Lieder," a 
book little known outside of kindergarten 
circles, but occupying a unique place in lit- 
erature, representing as it does the typical 
experiences of childhood. 

2. A critical study of Froebel's connected 
series of play-material, or his " Gifts and 
Occupations," with some practical work 
upon each one of them. 

3. Lectures on the representative plays of 
childhood, on the kindergarten games and 
songs, their meaning and value, and in this 
connection the learning and singing of suit- 
able songs for the home and nursery. 



48 THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

4. Lectures on story-telling as an art, and 
as a science, with suggestions on children's 
literature and the learning of typical stories. 

Talks on moral and physical training, on 
discij)line, on intermediate and higher edu- 
cation, and on the scientific study and ob- 
servation of children form part of the 
course also, being as varied and extensive 
as the time of the class and the wisdom 
of the leader admit. 

Informal meetings are also arranged, to 
which mothers may bring vexed questions, 
where matters maybe talked over in friendly 
council, where the experience of the many 
may be placed at the service of the one, 
where suggestions may be made as to help- 
ful reading-matter in the line of the work 
and advice given as to useful home and 
nursery occupations. 

The long-continued and beautiful work 
in the mothers' classes of the Chicago Kin- 
dergarten College culminated not long ago 
in an enthusiastic public conference, for 
which special railroad rates were arranged, 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 49 

and whose closing meeting was attended by 
eight hundred parents. That convocation 
might perhaps justly be called an epoch in 
the history of education, for though other 
specialists have come together for, lo, these 
many years, to speak and to hear wisdom 
upon the culture of vines, and trees, and 
flowers, and horses, and dogs, and cattle, 
and j)oultry, yet never before had mo- 
thers met in any numbers for the scientific 
study of the early years of childhood. 
Three daily sessions were held during this 
conference, and at the close of the first day 
it was found necessary to provide an addi- 
tional room for overflow meetings, and a 
larger hall for the evening assemblies. 
Artists, psychologists, physicians, and kin- 
dergarten training-teachers addressed the 
mothers, who were keenly appreciative of 
the value of the occasion, and free and un- 
constrained in query and discussion. Some 
of the subjects taken up were, Pre-Natal 
Influences, Influence of Nursery Appoint- 
ments, Clothing and Food of Young Chil- 



50 THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

dren, Stories and their Psychological Mean- 
ing, Constructive and Destructive Games, 
Home Training and Discipline, Applied 
Psychology and Kindergarten Principles. 

The interest felt in this first conference 
has inspired many other companies of wo- 
men to engage in similar work, and its 
success doubtless led in a measure to the 
convening of the First National Congress of 
Mothers, held in the capital of our country 
last winter.^ 

There were delegates at this Washington 
meeting from all parts of the United States 
and from Canada, while many of the lead- 
ing American educators, both men and wo- 
men, were in daily attendance. 

The subjects discussed were eminently 
practical : The Care, the Food, the Men- 
tal and Moral Education of Children ; 
Preparation for Motherhood; The Duties 
of Motherhood ; and what might be called 
the Public Responsibilities of Mothers. 
The audience was chiefly made up of re- 

1 February 17-19, 1897. 



THE PBIESTLY OFFICE 51 

presentatives from normal and free kinder- 
garten associations, Women's Christian Tem- 
perance Unions, benevolent organizations, 
educational and industrial organizations, 
and tlie Federation of Women's Clubs ; 
while the church was represented largely 
by mission woi^kers and the King's Daugh- 
ters. The addresses for the most part were 
educational, one resolution only being of- 
fered, and passed unanimously by a rising 
vote. This was in favor of admitting into 
the homes of our country " only those peri- 
odicals which inspire to noble thought and 
deed." 

Now, while some may question the advisa- 
bility of a National Congress of Mothers, no 
one, probably, will doubt the desirability 
of local mothers' meetings, designed for the 
exchange of experiences, for the study of 
the problems of childhood and of education, 
and of the community problems that affect 
home life. 

This training the kindergarten has begun 
to give to mothers, thus preparing them for 



62 THE PBIESTLY OFFICE 

what Froebel calls " their priestly office," 
the courses sketched above being intended 
for women of comparative leisure and edu- 
cation, and needing modification in manage- 
ment and in details for the hard-worked, 
unlettered women who attend the free kin- 
dergarten classes. These humble household 
priestesses can give no time to outside study, 
even if they knew how to pursue it, and the 
talks and lectures for their benefit must be 
briefer, simpler, and cover a more restricted 
field of subjects. The meetings, too, in dis- 
tinction from the study-clubs already de- 
scribed, have a social air about them which 
is carefully fostered by the kindergartner in 
order to give a little innocent gayety to 
these dull, imprisoned lives. The mothers 
are formally invited, in notes sent by the 
children, to be present on a certain after- 
noon, and the kindergartner who is to be 
the speaker puts on her pi-ettiest gown for 
the occasion. In certain kindergartens in 
the West, the assembly room is made into 
a bower of flowers and vines, and bouquets 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 53 

are frequently provided for the guests to 
take home ; but that is in bounteous Cali- 
fornia, where blossoms may be had for the 
asking. In the same kindergartens, too, as 
a large Housekeeper's Class is one of the 
branches of the work, they have a little 
maid of ten or twelve years, neatly attired 
in cap and apron, to open the door for the 
visitors and show them to their seats. 

At all these meetings, no matter where 
they are held, some light refreshment is 
served ; and when the mothers enter, they 
see a flower-trimmed table spread with a 
shining white cloth, and set with pretty cups 
and saucers, bright spoons, and a dainty 
spirit lamp and kettle. Then when the talk 
is over, the kindergartner and her assistants 
serve tea, coffee, or chocolate with seed- 
cakes, wafers, or cookies, and thus the oc- 
casion becomes a social event, a real after- 
noon tea, but much more delightful and 
insj^iring than such functions are com- 
monly found to be. 

The women are somewhat shy and em- 



64 THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

barrassed at first, but tliis is soon overcome 
as they grow better acquainted with the kin- 
dergartner and with one another, and gradu- 
ally learn the purpose of the meetings. It 
will be a cosmopolitan audience thus gath- 
ered together in any of our free kinder- 
gartens, and somewhat uncongenial in its 
elements, comprising, as it does, Italians, 
Germans, French, Irish, Scandinavians, He- 
brews, Africans, a few native-born Ameri- 
cans possibly, and perhaps even some wan- 
derers from Syria or Armenia. None are 
too foreign, however, to be pleased and at- 
tentive ; some evidently both understand 
and enjoy the simple address, some light up 
at intervals, others get one or two ideas 
only ; but, after all, this might be said of any 
audience, for when the flow of our thoughts 
to our fellow creatures is not blocked by 
ignorance or dullness, it is as apt to be 
impeded by prejudice, thoughtlessness, and 
abstraction in other matters. 

All the mothers have seen the kindergar- 
ten work and play, but they now for the first 



THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 65 

time are led to understand their meaning. 
At one meeting, perhaps, they are shown the 
first few gifts, — the kindergartner explain- 
ing simply their mathematical, architectural, 
and artistic value, and then giving them to the 
members of the class, who follow dictations 
as well as may be, and thus get some idea of 
both theory and practice. Another meeting 
is devoted to the simpler hand-work with 
explanations and illustrations ; another to 
story-telling and its value, when one or two 
useful stories manifolded on the hectograph 
or mimeograph are presented to the mothers. 
On another occasion, possibly, Froebel's 
games and songs are discussed, the kinder- 
gartner, with her assistants, drawing the 
guests to the circle and persuading them 
to play some of the more familiar ones. 

Talks are also given on such subjects as 
The New Baby, Children's Diseases and Re- 
medies, Children's Food and Clothing, The 
Mother as an Example, Punishments and 
Rewards, The True Discipline, Moral and 
Religious Training, Courtesy, Truth-Tell- 



56 THE PRIESTLY OFFICE 

ing, etc. ; tlie remarks being brief and clear 
and designed to lead to subsequent expres- 
sion of opinion from the audience. 

Think of the incomparable value of such 
meetings to these shut-in women, whose eyes 
have never learned to look beyond the nar- 
row streets in which they live, who never 
read, who never see fine pictures or hear 
sweet music, who have absolutely nothing 
around them which will quicken in their 
souls the flame of aspiration. Should a 
dozen, a score, a hundred, mothers' meet- 
ings only lighten for a time the burden laid 
on one of those tired backs ; only lift for a 
little the drooping corners of those sad, 
hard mouths ; only give those dull, short- 
sighted eyes one swift glimpse into the daz- 
zling face of the ideal, they would even then 
have served their purpose, they would have 
done a bit of the world's work and a bit 
worth doing. 



SAND AND THE CHILDREN 

" The plays of childhood have the mightiest influence 
on the maintenance or non-maintenance of laws." 

In a daily paper, not long ago, appeared 
the following brief article : — 

SAND-HILLS WANTED EOR CHILDEEN. 

The Brotherhood of the Kingdom has 
applied to the Park Board to provide sand- 
hills in various places in the city for the use 
of little children. Those who are urging 
this innovation in New York life say : — 

" In Berlin and other Continental cities, 
sand-hills are a long-established feature of 
the parks. In the ' Thiergarten ' there are 
large spaces reserved for that purpose ; the 
children dig to their hearts' content while 
the nurses and mothers sit reading and talk- 
ing, with an occasional glance at their 
charges. In the smaller parks in the centre 



58 SAND AND THE CHILDREN 

of the city there are sand-hills on every cor- 
ner, and they are often so crowded with chil- 
dren that they look more like little heaps of 
humanity than heaps of sand. 

" Sand-hills could be provided at the ends 
of the several greens in Central Park, at 
the Mall, and in the smaller parks of the 
city, like Bryant Park and Tompkins Square. 
The expense of providing and occasionally 
renewing them would be slight, and they 
would require little care, except occasionally 
sweeping back the sand. Altogether it 
would be hard to find an improvement giv- 
ing so much pleasure for so little outlay, and 
to the worthiest and most irrvpoHant class 
of our citizens." 

I have taken the liberty of italicizing eight 
words in the above quotation, because of the 
delicious novelty of the phrase. I have 
never doubted myself that the children were 
the most important class of our citizens — 
still less that they were the most worthy; 
but I have not been accustomed heretofore 



SAND AND THE CHILDBEN 59 

to find my attitude of mind adopted uncon- 
ditionally by the grown-up world. Dear 
American citizens of the future, the millen- 
nium is already dawning, if we have begun 
to realize just how worthy and how impor- 
tant you really are ! 

Germany seems in many respects to offer 
a simpler, freer, more truly childlike life to 
its little ones than is found in our coun- 
try. The German people have grown to 
understand them more thoroughly than we 
have ever taken time to do, and, under- 
standing, are better able to provide for their 
natural, instinctive wants. A land that has 
produced such writers of children's stories 
as the Grimm brothers, such a composer of 
children's songs as Reinecke, such a painter 
of child-pictures as Meyer von Bremen, such 
a child-lover and child-interpreter as Froe- 
bel, may be trusted to know what means 
of play and occupation are best suited to 
the simple, normal child. We are not sur- 
prised, therefore, when we read of the sand- 
hills in the " Thiergarten " and the smaller 



60 SAND AND THE CHILDEEN 

parks of Berlin, for these only minister to 
the strong desire, the natural instinct, to dig 
and to grub in the earth, shown by every 
young human animal, and noted by every 
discriminating observer. 

That this is a universal instinct no effort 
need be made to prove, for a momentary 
recollection of one's own childhood and a 
glance out upon the world will furnish all 
needed evidence of the statement. 

Who is so old that he cannot recall the 
soft, cool touch of the sand as he patted and 
smoothed it, the fascinating way in which it 
slipped through the fingers when poured 
from one hand into another, the endless joy 
of digging into its yellow dej)ths, the facility 
with which it could be heaped into moun- 
tain chains, hollowed into valleys, moulded 
into forts, and thrown up into breast- 
works ? 

Who has forgotten the delicate cakes and 
pies he used to make of sand, or, when it 
was well smoothed, how he delighted to im- 
press his hand upon the yielding surface, or 



SAND AND THE CHILDREN 61 

use it for a drawing-board, and sketch fig- 
ures and letters and pictures upon it ? 

There is no play-material which is at once 
so responsive, so indestructible, so cheap, and 
so universally enjoyed, and there is nothing 
which city children, at least, have so little 
opportunity to use. 

The delicately nurtured child is often 
warned away from sand-heaps for fear of 
soiled hands and clothing, for, as somebody 
says, " Thou shalt not make thyself dirty " 
is the first maternal commandment. 

The children of the poor, on the contrary, 
have no access to any such clean and attrac- 
tive play-material, save as they see it in 
small quantities on the sand-tables of the 
free kindergartens. Those institutions in 
most of our large cities, however, bear, un- 
foi'tunately, so slight a proportion to the 
number of children of kindergarten age 
that they can hardly be considered in the 
problem. In many of the German kindergar- 
tens, that of the Pestalozzi-Froebel House 
for instance, a large sand-garden shaded by 



62 SAND AND THE CHILDREN 

trees is provided, large enough for a number 
of children to j^lay in at once, and with suf- 
ficient quantity of sand to allow unlimited 
digging, grubbing, mining, gardening, and 
filling of small pails and carts. 

Most American kindergartens consider 
themselves blessed if they are possessed of 
a sand-table, which is merely a deep, water- 
tight box on stout legs, large enough for a 
dozen small persons to gather about, and 
filled with sand to within a few inches of the 
top. Around this box the children cluster 
and engage in all kinds of delightful plays 
under the friendly guidance of the kinder- 
gartner. At first they dig into the sand, 
cover and uncover their hands with it, pour 
it through their fingers, heap it up and level 
it again ; then they smooth it and press 
wooden balls deep down in it, perhaps, mak- 
ing quantities of soft, rounded birds' nests. 
On some other occasion paths and roads 
are laid out and " make-believe " gardens 
planted ; and by and by, when the workers 
have grown more expert, the whole surface 



SAND AND THE CHILDBEN 63 

is laid out to represent a village, with its 
surroundings of mountains, hills, lakes, and 
rivers. The children do all the work in 
company, dividing the labor according to 
their different abilities, and afterwards, 
with their blocks and sticks, erect the 
houses, the public buildings, fence the gar- 
dens and barnyards, and add life to the 
scene by planting miniature trees along the 
roadsides and stationing toy sheep and cows 
in the fields. By such means they taste the 
never-failing joy of playing in the sand, 
learn practically to know the value of coop- 
eration, and gain an idea of natural forma- 
tions which is most valuable in the school 
when the study of geography is begun. 
There, too, the sand-table is sometimes used, 
its value in geography-teaching being recog- 
nized in some quarters. But even though 
every child went to a kindergarten and sub- 
sequently to school (which supposition, alas ! 
is worlds away from truth), and even if sand 
were used in both places, the desirability of 
large sand-heaps in squares or courts or 



64 SAND AND THE CHILDREN 

parks, for free, unguicled play, would not 
therefore be lessened. The universal, healthy 
delight in real contact with the earth, the joy 
of digging and heaping, the keen interest in 
moulding a responsive substance, in working 
out ideas with an easily handled material 
— all these impulses need gratification on a 
larger scale than is practical in kindergarten 
and school, and need, too, a field where they 
can unfold spontaneously and with absolute 
freedom. 

Those who have read Dr. Stanley Hall's 
suggestive article, " The Story of a Sand- 
Pile," ^ will already have an idea of the 
wealth of valuable knowledge in various 
directions which may be gained by free play 
in the sand. There are now, we are told, 
throngs of children of school age in our 
growing American cities who do not attend 
school, and this largely because there is no 
room for them. What are these children 
doing, where are they playing, and what are 
they playing with ? It is obvious that they 
1 E. L. KeUogg & Co. 



SAND AND THE CHILDREN 65 

cannot be the children of the rich, or of the 
well-to-do portion of the population ; and it 
is equally obvious that a large proportion of 
them are either too young or too incapable 
to be at work, or that there is not as yet any 
necessity for their employment. Nobody 
who knows children supposes that they are 
sitting at home with folded hands ; particu- 
larly when home means two or three small 
rooms already overcrowded with furniture 
and babies and washtubs, and very deficient 
in light and air. But what are they doing 
— this immense army of school age, and 
the uncounted thousands a little younger, 
scarcely out of babyhood, and yet old enough 
to be in the streets ? Have they any play- 
grounds, have even the school-children them- 
selves any proper place to play, in or out of 
school hours ; in fine, have the children of 
the poor any one thing to do out of doors 
which is simple and normal and healthfxd? 
Take a walk through the crowded streets 
where babies most do congregate, and settle 
the question for yourself. You are fortunate 



66 SAND AND THE CHILDREN 

if yoii are able to bring back even the hint 

of an affirmative answer. 

There are some improved tenements, lately- 
erected in Brooklyn, which are built around 
a square, half of which is kept green as a 
park, and the other half provided with heaps 
of sand for children. The janitor merely 
shovels the sand into fresh heaps when the 
blithe workers have gone, but takes no other 
charge of the play, and the policemen sta- 
tioned in the neighborhood report that no 
windows have heen hrolcen there since the 
sand-piles were established. 

Would not a sand-pile placed in some 
appropriate spot and devoted to the use of 
children be as fitting a memorial to the 
beloved as a stained-glass window ? It would 
come considerably cheaper as an investment 
in the beginning, and the interest on it 
would be — how much greater in the end ? 



A DUMB DEVIL 

" This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." 

The fire won't burn ! It smoulders and 
hisses and sighs gloomily about the logs. 
Now and then it sends up a blunt arrow of 
flame which has no successor ; now and then 
it blows a great puff of smoke in your face 
as you kneel beside it shivering. You feed 
it with kindling which it seizes upon, chars, 
and throws aside. It resists poking, resists 
blowing, resists rearrangement. It won't do 
anything, — not even go out, but glowers at 
you with one defiant eye as you sink ex- 
hausted on the hearth. 

The world is cold and damp outside and 
warmth and comfort are sorely needed, but 
there you crouch with hands begrimed, in 
front of the blackened wood and the gray 
ashes. 



68 A DUMB DEVIL 

You are cliilled and tired and unhappy. 
The fire won't burn ! 

There is nothing more depressing in a 
household than that peculiarly unpleasant 
form of temper which we call sulkiness. It 
lowers the barometer of happiness as effec- 
tually as a northeast storm, and its noxious 
vapors spread abroad as quickly as the fumes 
of burning sulphur. 

It is another proof of the exquisite sensi- 
tiveness of the moral atmosphere that wraps 
us round that it can be so easily affected by 
the silent mood of another person, though 
that person be but a rebellious child afar in 
the nursery, or a mutinous cook glooming in 
the kitchen. 

Words, after all, play a small part in 
intercommunication, being as often used to 
conceal thought as to express it ; but no one, 
not even the household dog, can fail to inter- 
pret rightly the heavy silence, the lowering 
brow, the changed color, and the brooding 
eye of a human creature in the sulks. 



A DUMB DEVIL 69 

I confess that the temperament which is 
wont to hang out these and similar storm- 
signals is to my mind a supremely difficult 
one to deal with, and one which I should 
approach with a well-defined sinking at the 
heart. I do not say that it is hopeless of 
improvement, but the saving work must be 
begun very early and must rest upon a well- 
defined diagnosis of the disease, one of its 
overwhelming difficulties being that the 
patient resists remedies much as if he were 
afflicted with tetanus, while inquiry into his 
symptoms and the causes of his suffering is 
as profitable as to question the Sphinx. 

When does this temperament begin to 
show itself ? Certainly not as early as 
determined self-will or capability of fierce 
passion. It cannot appear before the birth 
of self-consciousness, for it commonly has its 
root in the supposed perception of injury to 
self ; nor can it come before the age when 
some reasoning power and conscious com- 
mand of memory have been attained, for its 
daily food is real or fancied grievances which 



70 A DUMB DEVIL 

tlie mind perceives, records, and will not or 
cannot forget. 

One of the causes of sulkiness is fre- 
quently to be found in a violated sense of 
justice. The child perceives, often with too 
much reason, that he is treated unfairly, 
that his misdeeds are punished capriciously, 
or more heavily than they deserve, or per- 
haps that he is corrected for a fault which 
another member of the family may commit 
with impunity. He knows that he is weak 
and cannot avenge himself, he is unable by 
the very constitution of his being to cry 
aloud for redress, and the sense of wrong 
filters slowly into his heart, corroding every- 
thing it touches. 

It is easily possible, of course, that this 
may be the state of the case ; but, on the 
other hand, it is quite as likely that his 
wrongs are largely imaginary, — ordinai-y 
occurrences seen with a jaundiced eye. The 
lunatic who fancies himself a king is exposed 
to a thousand assaults of rank and cruel 
wounds of dignity from his supposititious 



A DUMB DEVIL 71 

subjects, and the cliilcl who regards himself 
as the centre of the universe is easily 
wounded in self-love, and bears constantly 
about with him that inconvenient bit of 
luggage known as " a chip on the shoulder." 

There is no denying, I think, that egotism 
has much to do with sulkiness, and that if 
the child (or the grown person) could be led 
to have a juster idea of himself, if he could 
be persuaded to think less of his own wrongs 
and give some attention to other people's 
rights, his malady would be in a fair way of 
being cured. 

Let us be charitable, however, and re- 
member that what may appear like sulkiness 
is sometimes a dark and gloomy habit of 
mind which is consequent on physical weak- 
ness, or upon great ante-natal depression on 
the mother's part. I was discussing the 
subject the other day with an observant old 
lady from New England, who shrewdly re- 
marked, " Oh, half the time the children 
ain't a mite to blame for their sulky tem- 
pers. Some of 'em are down-hearted from 



72 A DUMB DEVIL 

the start. Why, I knew of a baby down to 
Hardscrabble that was discouraged when 
it wa'n't but two days old." 

The sullen child, if he is to be cured, 
needs more than any other to be surrounded 
with silent love, — waves of it, billows of it, 
floods of it, warm and grateful as a tropic 
ocean. Gloom, discouragement, rebellion, 
bitterness, cannot long endure in that sweet 
encompassmeut, and the child must be led 
to feel to the very depths of his selfish, tor- 
tured heart that in one quarter, at least, 
there will be inexhaustible mercy and ten- 
derness and sympathy. And this does not 
mean that he is to be humored, or petted, 
or his misdeeds overlooked, — it only means 
that such a child needs absolute certainty 
of love somewhere, lest he become another 
Cain, jealous and murderous as the first one. 
He must be treated with strict and absolute 
justice, which is entirely compatible with 
the highest kind of love ; and he must be 
made happy with suitable companionship 
and occupation. "Cross Patch," of childish 



A DUMB DEVIL 78 

rhyme, who sat by the fire to spin, doubtless 
had sufficient occupation, but we note that 
she drew the latch before she began to turn 
her wheel. This is of all things what the 
sulky child must not be suffered to do ; he 
must never draw the latch and seclude him- 
self to brood over his wrongs. 

Now, all these things — need of love, 
approj)riate discipline, happiness, suitable 
companionship, and occupation — are so 
many demands of the child's nature which 
have but one source of supply at this stage 
of his development, and that is the kinder- 
garten. It is not obtruded here, you observe, 
— it obtrudes itself, like a massive boulder 
sleeping under deep brown masses of pine 
needles, — softly covered and yet heaving a 
strong shoulder through the fragrant cover- 
lid. A well-ordered kindergarten seems in- 
deed to be by far the most effective agency 
for dealing with the beginnings of these 
moral evils, and one might as well attempt 
to ignore it as to ignore the water that bears 
up the yacht, or the flagstaff that holds the 
banner. 



74 A DUMB DEVIL 

There are no children on earth to whom 
the kindergarten is such a blessing as the 
selfish and the sulky ones, and to these it 
comes like an angel of deliverance. It is 
because the devil which dominates the sulky 
child is a dumb one, and therefore deaf, that 
he is so difficult to cast out. He cannot 
hear reason and he has never learned to 
speak it, and every avenue of self-expression 
which we open is for this cause a distinct 
and separate gain. The child draws and 
colors, moulds, builds, and invents, and the 
demon in his heart begins to oppress him 
less. He uses his voice and moves his body 
in song and game, and still greater relief is 
felt ; he is led to express a thought or an 
opinion through his absorption in his work ; 
and before long he is free, happy, and un- 
conscious. He is in the society of his equals, 
those who are of like age and strength and 
interests ; he has occupation which his soul 
loves ; and he is, for the most part, too busy 
to brood, and too interested in other things 
and people to think about himself. If the 



A DUMB DEVIL 75 

kindergarten is what it should be, he is al- 
ways treated fairly ; and should he give way 
to his besetting sin at any time, the disap- 
proval of the small world about him, repre- 
senting public opinion, is more keenly felt 
than the disapproval of his mother. If his 
body is kept in good condition by proper 
food and sleep, if he has plenty of outdoor 
exercise, which is especially essential to his 
temperament, if he is loved well and wisely 
at home, and if he is made happy, busy, and 
self-forgetful in a good kindergarten, then 
we may have every hope that his difficulties 
of temper will gradually be overcome. But 
if these things be neglected, or begun too 
late, then all the fasting and prayer of the 
Trappist monks will scarce avail to exorcise 
the dumb devil of sulkiness. 



AN UNWALLED CITY 

" He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city 
that is broken down and without walls." 

As there are many kinds of fire, from the 
quick crackle of dry sticks to the mighty 
sweep and roar of the full-fed blaze, or the 
sulky sputter and hiss that show wet wood, 
so there are many varieties of the passionate 
temper in children, each one needing sepa- 
rate analysis and separate mode of treat- 
ment. 

To begin at the beginning, all observant 
mothers will agree that the first manifes- 
tations of this temper occur at a very early 
age, some time before short clothes have 
been considered, and that remedies for it 
are often applied entirely too late. I can 
certainly testify from wide experience that 
a child of three years may already have 
developed a capacity for wild, unreasoning 



AN UNWALLED CITY 77 

rage that would shame a mad bull or a 
Hyrcan tiger. Had not the parents been 
adherents of the too common opinion that a 
baby's faults are very trifling things, which 
may be left to correction in after years, this 
capacity might already have been somewhat 
lessened. 

A child at the height of one of these 
accesses of rage is, in truth, an appalling 
object. Prone on the floor, kicking and 
stamping, flushed and screaming, biting and 
striking whatever hand is held out to him, 
swearing, if he be a child of the street, until 
the air is thick with sulphurous fumes, or, 
even worse, holding his breath until his face 
grows black and the eyes start from his 
head — he seems, in truth, a child no longer, 
but a creature under demoniacal possession. 
That the demon is one of his own rearing, 
tenderly nursed until it has attained its 
present monstrous strength, is of no 
moment, for what foes can a man have 
which shall be worse than those of his own 
household ? 



78 AN UN WALLED CITY 

What may be clone for him at the 
moment ? Shall we punish him ? As well 
put out a fire with kerosene. Shall we 
reason with him? As well reason with 
Vesuvius in full flow. Shall we try to 
soothe him with kind words and caresses? 
As well pat a cyclone on the back and coax 
it to be still. No ; 1 assert boldly that the 
only thing to be done at this juncture is to 
let him alone, to leave the room, if there be 
another room, and in some remote corner of 
the house offer up a small prayer for the 
souls of his ancestors (including ourselves), 
who undoubtedly have some responsibility 
for the phenomena we have just witnessed. 

In spite, however, of the fact that these 
blind furies are evil to look ujoon, as much 
so as convulsions, which they somewhat re- 
semble, the child who is torn by them need 
not be at all despaired of. There are many 
faults which are far more difficult to cure, 
and this one commonly springs from no 
radical defect of nature, but rather from a 
big, savage force somewhere which needs 



AN UN WALLED CITY 79 

regulating and putting to use. The pas- 
sionate temper in children is regarded more 
seriously, perhaps, because it is so ill to live 
with. Isaiah says in regard to the pride 
of Sennacherib, " Because thy rage against 
me and thy tumult is come up into mine 
ears, therefore I will put my hook in thy 
nose and my bridle in thy lips," the infer- 
ence being that if the noise of that rage had 
not been so unpleasant he would have made 
less effort at bridling and taming. So it 
is sometimes with the unfortunate child of 
passionate temper, who, because his tumult 
so dins at the ears, gets a thousand times 
more reproof and punishment than his quiet 
little brother, whose faults lie deep and 
black at the bottom of the stiU pool of his 
nature. 

Let us consider for a moment the causes 
of this fiery passion ; for, knowing these, it 
is easier to give relief. There is no doubt 
that violent fits of rage in children some- 
times spring from purely physical causes. 
An eminent physician says that a child is 



80 AN UNWALLED CITY 

often whipped for so-called " naughtiness," 
when what he needs is bed and a dose of 
medicine; and grown people, who know 
how difficult it frequently is to control the 
temjier in sickness, can well believe this 
to be true. But, excluding temporary ail- 
ments, the child may be in a low-toned, 
neurasthenic condition, when his passions 
are all on the surface, when everything and 
everybody is vexatious, and when he has 
absolutely no strength of will with which 
to resist the suggestions of his temper. In 
such a case nothing but careful and hygienic 
treatment can bring the body to its normal 
state and restore the balance of the emo- 
tions. 

There are other cases in which unreason- 
able rage sj^rings from some slight brain 
trouble, a pressure on some delicate fibre 
here, a nerve out of order there, some por- 
tion of the exquisite mechanism a little 
wrong somewhere. Persons familiar with 
the mysterious disease of epilepsy know that 
uncontrollable attacks of rage are among its 



AN UN WALLED CITY 81 

common symptoms, and if there seems no 
other cause for violent temper in a child, 
this one should at least be considered. 

Setting aside disorders of brain and nerve 
and body, and considering the normally 
healthy human creature, we cannot but see 
that home training is sometimes directly re- 
sponsible for these manifestations of temper. 
Perhaps the child has been accustomed to 
note, ever since he could note anything, 
that violent screaming always brought what 
he wanted ; perhaps the very first time he 
gave way to rage he observed that parents 
and guardians flew like leaves before the 
blast, and the way was cleared for his de- 
sires ; perhaps he has never been taught 
self-control in any appetite ; perhaps he 
has been spoiled and petted and humored 
until he is a monster of caprice. If any of 
these suppositions be true, alas for the suf- 
ferer ! for his only help will be within his 
own bosom, and in the long stretch of years 
before he learns the necessity of self-con- 
trol the temper-demon will gain appalling 
strength. 



82 AN UN WALLED CITY 

There are possibilities, too, that the child 
has a strong will which some injudicious 
person has been trying to break, that he has 
been continually over - punished, that his 
keen sense of justice has been wounded 
until it cries out in pain, or that he has 
been fed on those " grievous words " which 
never fail to " stir up anger." 

But here he is as we have made him, and 
what shall we do for him now? Obviously, 
find out the cause of the disease, if possible, 
and, if we be the offenders, repent it in 
angviish and bitterness, and strive to cast 
out the devils which we ourselves invited in. 
In the first place — and this is not weak- 
ness, but common sense — try not to enter 
into controversies with him, avoid provo- 
cation, and endeavor to ward off absolute 
issues. Distract his attention, try to get 
the desired result in some other way, but 
give no room for an outburst of temper if 
it can be avoided, remembering that every 
stone broken from the city's walls renders 
it more defenseless. 



AN UNWALLED CITY 83 

Do not fret him with groundless prohi- 
bitions, do not speak to him quickly and 
sharply, and never meet passion v»^ith pas- 
sion. If you punish him when you are 
angry, he clearly sees that he, because he is 
small and weak, is being chastised for the 
same fault which you, being large and 
strong, may commit with impunity. 

After one of these outbursts of temper, 
do not reprove and admonish the rebel until 
he is rested. The storm descended like a 
very hurricane upon the waters of his spirit, 
and the noise of the waves must be stilled 
before the mind can listen to reason. When 
the sun comes out, after the storm, is the 
time to note wreckage and take measures 
for future safety. Select some quiet, happy 
hour, then, in which you can gently warn 
him of his besetting sin, and teach him to 
be on his guard against it. Until this time 
comes, and he is in a condition for counsel 
and punishment, an atmosphere of grief and 
disapproval may be made to encompass him, 
which he will feel more keenly than spoken 



84 AN UN WALLED CITY 

words. And when the time for punishment 
does come, let us try to make it, as far as 
possible, the natural penalty, that which is 
the inevitable effect of given cause ; for, as 
" face answereth to face in water," so the 
feeling of justice within the child to the 
eternal justice of world-law. 

Finally, let us be patient, but firm and 
unceasingly watchful, and let slip no oppor- 
tunity for teaching self-control and cultivat- 
ing strength of will ; for we must remember 
that a passionate temper, if not early brought 
under restraint, is as dangerous a thing as 
a powder-magazine, differing only in that it 
needs no outside aid to produce an explo- 
sion, but can manufacture and aj)ply its 
own igniting power. 



PERILOUS TIMES 

" In the last days perilous times shall come, for men 
shall be lovers of their own selves." 

On looking over the Concordance one 
clay, for a fit text from which to preach 
a sermon on selfishness, I was struck by 
the fact that the writers of the New Testa- 
ment had exactly six times as much to say 
iij)on the subject as had the early priests 
and kings and prophets. Is selfishness a 
product of civilization then ? Hardly that, 
for its foundation - stones, self - preserva- 
tion, interest in self, love of seK, are primi- 
tive instincts and absolutely necessary ones. 

The passion must always have existed 
and doubtless was a thousandfold strono^er 
in the childhood of the world, but it was 
probably so much the normal state that no 
one thought of taking measures against it ; 
as, were it customary for all to suffer from 



86 PERILOUS TIMES 

smallpox, no one would think o£ vaccina- 
tion. 

When man had outgrown the animal 
state in which self-preservation was his first 
law, stray beams of thought for others be- 
gan now and then to shine in upon the 
darkness of his soul, but it was left for the 
great Teacher of all time to bring the full 
glory of the sunlight when He commanded 
us to love our neighbors as ourselves and 
when He uttered the immortal paradox, 
" He that loseth his life for my sake shall 
find it." 

The very young child, like his kinsfolk 
the animals and his far-away brother in the 
Dark Ages, commonly looks at life from 
the standpoint of his own desires and ne- 
cessities, and has as yet little interest in or 
sympathy with the feelings of any one else. 
This is normal and necessary if life is to be 
well nourished ; and it is unwise to force 
upon him too early the duty of altruism, 
which belongs to a later ethical period. 
The fact that the word altruism is com- 



PERILOUS TIMES 87 

paratively a new one, grown into popular 
use within the memory of some of us, shows 
that the feeling it describes has not long 
been widespread, and is another evidence 
that we must not expect too much from the 
child in this direction. 

We need not be over-anxious, then, if 
baby finds himself an all-engrossing subject 
in his earliest years ; but, lest this self- 
interest become a passion, we must watch 
him carefully as he grows older, and sur- 
round him with an atvnosphere which will 
gently, unobtrusively, suggest to him the 
interests of others. 

Of all the evil passions which lurk within 
the breast of man, surely there is none so 
black and hateful as selfishness ; and not 
only is it to be feared in itself, but because 
it is the mother of the whole Satanic brood 
of vices. A modern writer says : " Selfish- 
ness is the fault most impossible to forgive or 
excuse, since it springs neither from an error 
of judgment nor from the exaggeration of a 
generous motive. ... It is the result of 



88 PERILOUS TIMES 

a cold-blooded, self-concentrated system of 
calculation, which narrows the sympathies 
and degenerates the mental powers." 

Great capabilities for it lie in every 
nature — no, I may not make so broad a 
statement, for now and then one meets 

' ' a purity of soul 
That will not take pollution, ermine-like 
Armed from dishonor by its own soft snow." 

Yet these are the exceptions, and the ordi- 
nary, strong, healthy, hearty child starts in 
life with almost as full an equipment of pos- 
sibilities for evil as for good. 

The root of selfishness is doubtless there ; 
but the influences which surround the tiny 
human being will determine whether it shall 
lie sleeping underground or send up shoots 
of rank luxuriance. Too complete devotion 
in the parents, too absolute forgetfulness of 
self on their part, wakens no similar passion 
in the child, but rather the opposite feeling. 
To deny ourselves the pleasure of self-denial 
towards him is often the wisest course ; and 
to attempt to bear all his troubles, to save 



PERILOUS TIMES 89 

him every effort, to bend our wills to his, to 
make all sacrifices for him, expecting none 
in return — this is to make of him a very 
Juggernaut, whose triumphal car will one 
clay ride over our prostrate bodies. Felix 
Adler says, in his remarkable pamphlet on 
" Parents and Children : " " The care of 
children is the great means of stimulating 
and preserving unselfishness in the world. 
The love of children is the great balance- 
wheel that counteracts the strong tendency 
towards egfotism." The thouoht is as true 
as it is beautiful, but some of us need to be 
careful lest we cultivate our own plant of 
self-sacrifice at the expense of the child's. 
Unselfishness is a habit of mind which may 
be developed, and there are a thousand 
simple ways in which the training may be 
begun even in the earliest days of existence. 
A bit of some dainty given up for love's sake, 
a miniature task performed for some one, an 
errand within the house which baby feet 
may easily perform, a temporary sharing of 
playthings with a tiny visitor, the tending of 



90 PERILOUS TIMES 

plants, the caring for pet animals — all 
these are ordinary daily happenings which 
may easily be put within the reach of any 
child, and which are the beginning of life's 
service to life. 

It is absolutely essential, as Froebel says, 
to give outward form to the loving thoughts 
that stir within the child's heart, remember- 
ing that love which gains no expression 
either in thought or action is love which 
droops and dies away. Here, steadily, surely, 
strongly as the river sweeps to the ocean, 
the subject brings me to the kindergarten. 

There is no spot on this earth, nor in any 
other star that God has made, so absolutely 
and eternally fitted to teach unselfishness as 
is that " free republic of childhood " where 
the principles of Froebel hold their sway, 
for no other educator has ever so felt the 
" inseparable dependency of all spirits uj)on 
one another's being and their essential and 
perfect depending on their Creator's." 

He knew, as Carlyle says, that "each 
individual person is a part of the great 



PERILOUS TIMES 91 

venous-arterial stream that circulates through 
all Space and all Time," and the whole 
fabric of the kindergarten is held together 
by his recognition of that truth. The very 
circle in which the children sing and play, 
the games in which no one may usurp 
another's place, the thought that underlies 
them, which is the inseparable connection 
of all life, the work in common, the labor 
gladly done for others, the care for the 
weaker children, the aid given to those 
younger and less advanced, the nurture of 
plants and animals — all these are so many 
air-currents, which taken together make a 
mighty wind blowing away the vice of self- 
ishness like a noxious vapor. Send the 
selfish child to the true kindergarten, keep 
him in the life-giving atmosphere at any 
cost, and if the springs of altruism in your 
own heart be exhausted, visit it yourself, 
that you may see in miniature " a perfect 
union in which no man can labor for him- 
self without laboring at the same time for 
all others." 



A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 

" Thy tongue deviseth mischiefs ; like a sharp razor, 
•working deceitfully." 

The word lie is a very ugly one, — doubt- 
less not uglier tlian the thing itself, but too 
liarsli to describe some of the untruths of 
children, which can scarcely be judged by 
the same standard as those of grown people. 
The lies (so called) of these little ones need 
long and careful observation, and form a 
most important object of study, because of 
the possibility of discovering the causes 
which produce them, applying remedies and 
using the experience gained, in the treatment 
of other delinquents. 

Speaking from long and close observation, 
from introspection, and from conversation 
with parents, I should say that untruthfulness 
in early years is commonly due to one of the 
following causes : — 



A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 93 

Imitation. Remember that imitation is 
one of the four fundamental instincts of 
childhood, and if the little one is uutrvithful, 
inquire if, in his immediate circle of parents, 
nurses, teachers, and companions, there be 
not some one who is unconsciously serving 
him as a model. He may never have heard 
a direct untruth, but evasion, subterfuge, 
and concealment are brethren of lies, and 
so are the falsehoods of politeness. 

It is folly for us to preach to him of the 
beauty of truth if he seldom sees it practiced ; 
it is idle to point him to a road down which 
we never go ourselves ; and before we give 
him any maxims on veracity let us ponder 
Emerson's terrible words, " How can I hear 
what you say, when what you are is thunder- 
ing in my ears ? " 

Fear. Of all the motives to falsehood, 
fear seems to be the most potent and the 
commonest, begins earliest, and lasts longest. 

Morbid fear of various kinds is a well- 
known symptom of neurasthenia, and is 
much more common amono- children than is 



94 A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 

ordinarily supposed. It need scarcely be 
considered in the case of a strong, healthy, 
mentally well-balanced child, but it is well 
to remember that there is such a thing as 
abnormal fear, and that in its various degrees 
it is a disease, and a disease of grave import. 
In its normal state it is placed within us 
as a kind of necessary brake or safety- 
attachment ; but note if, by your treatment 
of the child, you have not so aggravated the 
instinct that he is rendered absolutely inca- 
pable of truth-telling when under its influ- 
ence. It is not probable that he stands in 
bodily terror of you, though cruelty to chil- 
dren is still to be found, even among the 
educated classes, but he fears your impa- 
tience, your passion, and your cutting rebuke. 
Perhaps he is by nature unusually sensitive, 
and a hasty word which you would hardly 
feel falls on him like the blow of a Russian 
knout. He deserves punishment, and prob- 
ably knows it as well as you do, but your 
former judgments of him have been so dis- 
proportionately severe, and your uniform 



A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 95 

treatment so harsh, that you have added a 
thousand times to his natural equipment of 
fear, while you have lessened his courage 
in the same projjortion. Tyranny always 
breeds deception ; if you doubt it, you can 
turn to history for proof. 

Desire for cqyproval. Close on the heels of 
fear as a cause of falsehood comes the desire 
to please, which is almost a mania in some 
children. When normally developed, it is a 
useful passion which can safely be appealed 
to in educational training ; but if unwisely 
treated, it may become a moral deformity. 

It is one of the signs, wlien seen in excess, 
of a weak and sensitive nature wliich cannot 
be content unless its every word and action 
pleases those it loves. The child who pos- 
sesses it hungers for approval, and, when 
truth is in question, withholds, colors, or 
distorts it, according as he fancies it will be 
most pleasing. 

The falsehoods which grow from excessive 
desire to please are near akin to those which 
are prompted by the passion of emulation, 



96 A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 

and many o£ our scliool practices pander to 
both of them. Prize-giving and the system 
of ranking by credits are fruitful sources of 
deceit, and are as much to be condemned as 
excessive punishments. 

Self-conceit. Egotism may be said to 
prompt another class of falsehoods which be- 
long to later childhood (as well as to ma- 
turity), and which are generally brilliant 
fictions designed to surround the narrator 
with a blaze of glory. What Charles Reade 
calls " fluent, fertile, interesting, sonorous, 
prompt, audacious liars " belong to this class, 
and in early years it is not difficult to cure 
them by pricking the bubble of self-conceit. 

Perhaps we may also include in this group 
the children who tell the lies of jealousy, for 
this surely has its root in egotism. These 
are they who can never learn of any feat of 
strength but they swear their father can do 
more, who never hear of any wonderful ani- 
mal but they have it confined on their own 
premises, who never know of any interesting 
event but they want to persuade you that it 



A DEVISEE OF MISCHIEFS 97 

has happened, is happening, oi' will happen 
to them. 

Imagination. There is another so-called 
class of lies which are merely products of ex- 
cessive imagination, and in little children 
these are often entirely misunderstood and 
mistreated. The child recounts many won- 
derful stories which never occurred, nor by 
any possibility could occur ; but to tell him 
they are false, and punish him for them, as 
is often done, is to drive him into lying. 
Imagination is his dominant power, and what 
he sees happen in his dream-world, he gives 
as an actuality. His stage of mental develop- 
ment corresponds to the myth-age of the 
race, and by and by the age of reason will 
appear, when he will learn to separate and 
classify his mental impressions. In the mean- 
time, while we listen to the young improvi- 
satore, we can, by a little gentle comment, 
begin to make clear to him the difference 
between a " play " and a " truly story," and 
the place which each must occupy. 

Pseiidoi^hobia. The student of childhood 



98 A DEVISEE OF MISCHIEFS 

also recognizes that lying may proceed from 

a mental obliquity, an absolute inability to 

see the truth clearly ; but this is exceedingly 

uncommon, and constitutes a form of mental 

disease which the modern psychologists call 

2oseudophohia. 

While we are discussing these various 
forms of lies, let us note that there is fre- 
quently a period in the lives of young children 
when it is impossible to place much reliance 
on their statements ; but this is commonly 
only a passing phase and need give us no 
serious anxiety, for it may be due as much 
to their imperfect grasp of language as to 
any other cause we have mentioned. 

In the general treatment of falsehood it is 
wise to remember that Froebel believed in- 
ward clearness to proceed from outward or- 
der, and turn to the kindergarten as one of 
our aids to righteousness. 

A continued series of exercises in exact- 
ness, accuracy, and measurement both of 
hand, eye, and brain ; repeated observation 
that one false step at the beginning of work 



A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 99 

brings failure at every succeeding step ; a 
clear conception of cause and effect, — all 
these are helps to truth-telling, and all these 
belong to the kindergarten. 

Here, also, the imagination is guided, not 
suppressed, and new outlets for it found in 
the hearing of stories which in themselves 
may serve as a rebuke for falsehood, if the 
moral is woven into the very fabric of the 
tale. 

Whether in home, kindergarten, or school, 
however, let us bear in mind that " the high- 
est in the child is aroused only by example," 
and provide it not alone in ourselves, but in 
his nurses, teachers, and companions. We 
may also note, as we look back over the sub- 
ject, that the great cause of untruth is weak- 
ness in one form or another, and therefore 
that it is incumbent upon us in the training 
of children to use every possible means to 
discourage self-indulgence, to cultivate self- 
respect, and to elevate the sense of personal 
honor. The whole nature of the weak and 
faltering human creature needs tonics, exer- 



100 A DEVISER OF MISCHIEFS 

cise, and strengtliening baths, that it may 
run the race of life successfully. Not only 
is this true, but we must remember, in the 
words of one of the world's great teachers,^ 
that " loyalty to truth is the most rare and 
difficult of human qualities, for such loyalty, 
as it grows in perfection, asks ever more 
and more of us, and sets before us a stan- 
dard always rising higher and higher." 
^ Thomas Hughes. 



"TELL ME A STORY" 

" Since tliey be children, tell them of battles and kings, 
horses, devils, elephants, and angels, but omit not to tell 
them of love and such-like." 

If you follow the dusky track of the twi- 
light as it tiptoes round the world, in land 
after land you and the twilight together 
will steal upon a little circle of children 
gathered about the knees of a story-teller. 
It may be where the stars are lighting their 
tapers in the deep sky above the desert 
sands ; it may be by the flickering blubber 
lamp in the ice hut ; by the firefly's torch 
in the green gloom of the tropic forest ; 
where the feathery bamboos wave and the 
tea-plant blossoms white ; or by the wigwam 
blaze on the lonely prairie. 

Earth is circled with this vast company 
of story-tellers, nightly surrounded by their 
little ones, black, and white, and red, and 



102 TELL ME A STORY 

brown, and yellow ; their eager, upturned 
faces and eloquent voices all uttering the 
same plea, " Tell us a story, oh, tell us a 
story ! " 

So it was in the plains of Mamre when 
Abraham told tales of mighty kings and 
warriors of old to his dearly beloved Isaac ; 
so it was in Egypt when the waiting-maids 
of the Princess poured their folk-lore into 
baby Moses' listening ears ; so it was in the 
Garden of Eden probably, though really 
Eve must have been a person of such slight 
experience and scanty information that it is 
difficidt to imagine what kind of stories she 
could have told to little Cain and Abel. 

So it is, so it has been, so shall it always 
be, for the love of stories is inherent in the 
race. With some children a calm delight, 
with others an absolute passion, yet it exists 
in all in fair measure, and for ages past has 
been a great moral and educational agency. 
We of to-day, who live in a world of books, 
and who insist that our children shall be 
early taught to read, that they may the 



TELL ME A STORY 103 

sooner, as Seguin wittily says, " cover the 
emptiness of their own minds with the 
patchwork of others" — we hardly realize, 
perhaps, the marvelous effect which a well- 
told story may produce upon the virgin 
mind and soul. It can but seem vastly 
more real and vital than the same thing 
seen in cold type on a printed page, and it 
has the added charm of look and move- 
ment and fitting gesture, in short, of dra- 
matic expression. Before the days of book- 
knowledge, all the simple learning of the 
race was gained at the feet of the story- 
teller, who was the conserver of history and 
the repository of scientific fact. " The 
household story," as has been very well 
said, " was the earliest ethical study in the 
educational curriculum of the race ; " and 
the extent to which it was used for this 
purpose may be measui-ed by the strong 
moral sentiment pervading most of the 
nursery tales and childish legends which 
have come down to us from the olden time. 
In these days of the thoughtful study of 



104 TELL ME A STORY 

childhood it has come to be pretty generally 
felt that educational training, to be success- 
ful, must be suited to child-nature, and that 
any exercise in which the normal, and for 
that matter the abnormal child takes un- 
varying delight must therefore, and on that 
account, be the one which may be made 
most serviceable to him. From the days of 
Eve the instinctive mother has ministered 
to the love of stories ; but she cannot, in 
every case, be trusted to do so wisely until 
she knows the reasons for its existence and 
the purposes it may be made to serve. 

What is the secret of the charm which 
story-telling has for the child? Is it not, 
first, perhaps, the fact that it interprets life 
— wonderful, mysterious, fascinating life — 
to him, and places in his hand a sort of 
telescope, through which he eagerly j^eers 
into the world across the threshold of his 
nursery? Is it not, again, that it addresses 
the imagination — his dominant power, his 
delight, his way of escajjc, that he may be 
able to bear the dullness, the denseness, the 



TELL ME A STORY 105 

want of comprehension, of the grown-up 
world? Stories satisfy, too, his impatient 
feeling of justice, which the slow march of 
earthly events so often irritates, while they 
gratify his love of novelty and variety and 
his healthy curiosity. Froebel asserts that 
they arouse the inner life of the listener, 
that their flow carries him out of himself, 
and he thereby learns to measure himself 
more truly. 

Fortunate, indeed, are we that what is so 
dear a delight may at the same time be 
used as an agent in mental and spiritual 
uplifting. Consider the story-teller, for in- 
stance, merely as the humble workman who 
rolls up the curtain that the drama of lit- 
erature may begin. The curtain must be 
raised, else the play will remain a mysteiy, 
and an occasional half -heard voice only serve 
to tantalize the unfortunate audience. 

Regarded in its proj)er light as the be- 
ginning of literature, the story assumes a 
more important position, and the duty at 
once becomes clear of selecting it wisely, 



106 TELL ME A STORY 

that it may serve to lead to higher things. 
Because a chikl has a fresh, youthful ap- 
petite for tales of any kind, it does not 
follow that they will all give him equal 
nourishment. There are certain essentials 
which must always be considered in select- 
ing a story. First, it must be true ; by 
which I mean true when " ideally inter- 
preted." The incidents need never have 
really occurred ; indeed, some of the truest 
things have never yet happened, for " Fact 
at best," as George Macdonald says, " is 
but a garment of truth, which has ten thou- 
sand changes of raiment woven in tlie same 
loom." Then it must be suitable in length, 
for the art in this is like that of a letter — 
to leave off so that the hearer shall wish 
there was more of it. Should it not also 
keep in touch with the dominant interest of 
the day, if this be one appropriate to child- 
hood? Indeed, if it is not appropriate, 
better seize the interest and turn it to nobler 
uses, for when the town is ringing with ex- 
citement over the outcome of a prize-fight 



TELL ME A STORY 107 

it is idle to suppose your boy will be deaf to 
the echoes. 

Why not take the occasion to introduce 
him to some of the grand figures of my- 
thology, to the real heroes of history, or to 
recite some stirring ballad of doughty deeds 
which will make him feel what courage 
really is, and how a true knight uses his 
strength. So Mazzfni advised mothers to 
do in the twilight hour, — to tell the chil- 
dren tales of great men who had worked 
and fought, and loved the people. 

That the story should be clothed in well- 
chosen, fitting words, and narrated in as 
graceful a style as possible, goes without 
saying if you agree that the germs of liter- 
Sivj taste begin to grow under its influence. 
I sincerely believe, however, that it is better 
to tell a story most clumsily and with a halt- 
ing tongue than not to tell it at all. If it 
have a vital interest and hold a kernel of 
truth, the child will appropriate from it what 
he needs, in spite of its rude setting ; for 
familiarity with good English and literary 



108 TELL ME A STORY 

taste, valuable as they are, are not the only 
things develojDed by story -telling, — they are 
merely the beginning of the long category. 
We cannot teach a child by maxims, for 
instance (and I doubt if we can the adult 
imtil he has seen experience illustrate 
them) ; but pour the truth they hold into 
the mould of an attractive story, and watch 
the effect upon the mind. The tale is often 
asked for, if it is a really good one, and by 
and by the truth it enfolds takes root and 
grows, and will keep on growing though ad- 
verse winds of doctrine blow. By means of 
these narratives the child is confronted with 
actions and situations quite new to him, but 
upon which he must perforce pass uncon- 
scious judgment, and thus his discrimination 
is aroused and his ideals are strengthened. 
"Thus," as Mr. Hamilton Mabie says, 
" the individual life learns the lessons which 
universal life has learned, and pieces out its 
limited personal experience with the experi- 
ence of humanity." You may spend hours, 
for instance, in moralizing to a child upon 



TELL ME A STORY 109 

the beauty of unselfishness, and not produce 
a thousandth part of the effect which you 
might have made by telling him the story of 
gallant Philip Sidney and the cup of cold 
water given to one whose necessities were 
greater than his. 

We must never neglect the purely imagi- 
native tale when dealing with children, for, 
though we grown folk may live in a matter- 
of-fact world, the little ones are still by choice 
in the realm of fancy, and their place of 
residence must be considered when we se- 
lect their literature. If imagination be the 
strongest element in the child's nature (and 
who can doubt it who really knows him), 
then it obviously needs wise guidance rather 
than repression. We may be sure the power 
is there for some good purpose, and that 
we ignore one of our highest possibilities for 
influence when we pass it by. 

The fairy tale, with its simple, uninvolved 
plot, its transparent personages, its poetic 
atmosphere, and its hazy, indefinite time of 
action, is absolutely suited to children, who. 



110 TELL ME A STOBY 

as Mr. Howells says, " do not very distinctly 
know their dreams from their experiences, 
and live in a world where both project the 
same quality of shadow." Doubtless there 
are fairy tales entirely unfit for children, 
which have been perverted since they 
trickled long ago from the spring- of univer- 
sal myth ; but the same objection may be 
made to absolute historic happenings, and 
the story-teller above all other persons needs 
constantly to exercise his judgment and his 
critical facvdty. 

Nor can there be any fear of telling the 
fairy tale too often when we reflect that the 
great stream of literature at our command 
has a host of branches, of which this is only 
one, and that " the earth is full of tales to 
him who listens." 

There are the science stories, which may 
be made most valuable and interesting, and 
the patriotic ones, especially appropriate to 
the nation's holidays, which deal with the 
beginnings of history, and, by leading the 
child to admire, gradually bring him to love 



TELL ME A STOBY 111 

his country. Then there is perhaps now and 
then some tale which will develop sympathy 
with our kinsfolk the animals, or some wise 
little fable which will instruct as well as 
amuse. And why, in the name of all that is 
beautiful, do we confine ourselves so largely 
to prose when talking and reading to chil- 
dren ? They are a hundred, a thousand 
times more susceptible than we to the linked 
sweetness of cadenced syllables, to the mu- 
sical fall or martial swing of verse. I have 
seen many a stolid, lumjjish child sit, bi-eath- 
ing heavily, staring at the opposite wall, 
quite vacuous and unimpressed during the 
recital of an ordinary story, and yet if a line 
or two of poetry has fallen on his dull ear 
he has slowly turned toward the sf)eaker, 
his glazed eye brightening, and animation 
transforming his whole expression. This 
he will do oftentimes, though the poem be 
almost entirely beyond his comprehension ; 
and he will even rouse from his lethargy 
sufficiently to give a feeble encore, though 
he has never before been known to express 
any form of emotion. 



112 TELL ME A STORY 

One great drawback to the telling of 
stories, either in prose or verse, is that there 
are so few that can be bought ready-made, 
as it were. There seems to be a very gen- 
eral misconception on the part of authors as 
to what the child really likes, doubtless due 
to a mere bowing acquaintance with him, or 
to a superficial observation of the workings 
of his mind. Many collections of stories are 
about children rather than J'or them, and 
are much more appropriate for the adult in 
their careful delineation of character and 
accurate painting of emotions. Others are 
patiently written down to the child's level, 
as the saying goes, there being some general 
misunderstanding as to where that level is, 
and a failure on the part of the author to 
comprehend that it is frequently quite above 
his own head. 

If one has had long experience with chil- 
dren, however, and knows them as well as 
one can know beings of another star, it is 
comparatively easy to adapt literature to 
their needs, to shorten here, to lengtlien 



TELL ME A STORY 113 

there, and generally to fit the garment to 
the wearer. Again, one may lack experi- 
ence entirely and yet have an innate fitness 
for the work and an intuitive comprehension 
of and sympathy with childhood, which is in 
efPect a kind of genius ; and for these two 
classes of people the work of story-telling is 
easy. 

But if one have neither natural adaptation 
nor experience, still I say. Tell the stories ; 
tell the stoi'ies ; a thousand times, tell the 
stories! You have no cold, unsympathetic 
audience to deal with ; the child is helpful, 
receptive, warm, eager, friendly. His 
whole-hearted interest, his surprise, admira- 
tion, and wise comment, will spur you on to 
greater efforts, and when the story is con- 
cluded you will wonder which of you has 
been the greater gainer. 



"THE AUTHENTIC" IN KINDERGAR- 
TEN TRAINING 

" I serve you not, if you I follow, 
Shadow-like, o'er hill and hollow." 

A SERIES of discriminating essays by G. 
H. Lewes on the " Principles of Success in 
Literature " gives as one of these that of 
Authenticity. " What writers have seen 
and felt may not be new," he says, " it may 
not be intrinsically important ; nevertheless, 
if authentic, it has its value, and a far greater 
value than anything reported by them at 
second hand. We cannot demand from 
every man that he have unusual depth of 
insight or exceptional experiences ; but we 
demand of him that he give us of his best, 
and his best cannot be another's. The facts 
seen through the vision of another, reported 
on the witness of another, may be true, but 
the reporter cannot vouch for them. Let 



KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 115 

the original observer speak for himself. 
Otherwise only rumors are set afloat." 

Is not this equally true in all art, whether 
it be painting, sculpture, literature, or edu- 
cation? Of what use the attempt to paint 
a composition never seen by one's self with 
eye of flesh, or eye of spirit, but merely se- 
lected as a taking subject ? Of what avail 
to spend months of time and labor in carv- 
ing a statue, the ideal for which never ex- 
isted in one's own brain, which is the half- 
assimilated fruit of another's suggestion and 
which when completed must lack the 
strength of sincerity ? A landsman who 
scarcely knew the rig of one ship from an- 
other would make a poor figure at writing 
a novel of the sea, and should he attempt to 
do so because sea stories happened to be pop- 
ular, he would inevitably make a failure be- 
cause his narrative was not the outcome of 
personal experience. How could he describe 
the seethe of the foam, the sparkling roll 
of the wave, the tang of the salt air, the 
song of the wind in the sails, the dancing, 



116 KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 

springing, buoyant motion, if lie liad never 
been at sea, but gathered his data from the 
Encyclopaedia and wrote his tale in a garret 
chamber ? 

Who would attempt to write a poem deal- 
ing with the dark intrigues, the miseries, the 
complications, the imbroglios, of life in a 
palace of the Orient, if he received his in- 
formation at second hand from a man who 
had once been behind the scenes ? If a 
minister of the gospel acknowledged that he 
knew nothing personally of the holy mys- 
teries he was discussing, but had the facts 
from his father in whose experience he be- 
lieved, we should scorn to listen to his idle 
words. 

It is the authentic which is of value, it is 
the report at first hand, the painting which 
bears the mark of personality, the statue 
which shows the touch of the individual, the 
poem, the novel, the essay, fresh, original, 
glowing with conviction, and valuable be- 
cause the old facts, ideas, and thoughts have 
been passed through a new mind, and have 
come forth stamped with a new image. 



KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 117 

A commentary on a commentary of the 
Holy Scriptures never yet convinced the un- 
believer of the truths of righteousness ; notes 
on a French translation of a German ren- 
dering of Shakespeare's plays would hardly 
succeed in impressing the reader with the 
genius of the great dramatist ; and if we take 
the subject into the realm of education, we 
shall find that the teaching which is the 
product of our own convictions is the only 
one which is of value. One must write, 
paint, carve, act, think, speak, teach, in ac- 
cordance with one's own temperament, one's 
own character and individuality. Bright, 
breezy. Miss So-and-So may be delightful 
when she gives her lessons and exercises in 
her own vivacious manner, but it does not 
follow that Miss Such - an - One with her 
serene, reflective temperament could teach in 
any such manner, even though Miss So-and- 
So finds it most successful. Mr. Blank's 
pamphlet of devices in number-teaching is 
most vigorous and helpful ; Mr. Dash ac- 
knowledges this, he gets many valuable 



118 KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 
hints from it, but he knows that he cannot 
teach number in that way. He has learned, 
as Emerson says, that the inventor did it be- 
cause it was natural to him, but for any one 
else to do merely what he has done is the 
veriest of slavish servitude, out of which 
nothing good can come. 

In all education, and in kindergarten 
education in particular, there is too much 
usino- of John Brown's notes on John Smith's 
commentary on John Jones's translation of 
the original. 

We accept one person's experience in 
art-teaching, another's views on discipline, 
another's method of musical instruction, still 
another's way of imparting the elements of 
science, until our work is a thing of shreds 
and patches, caught together here and there 
with a thread of our own personality. Not 
that all these things were not of value to the 
minds in which they grew and to which they 
were adapted ; not that we cannot gain much 
from reading and observation ; but that we 
must learn to discover in each new sug- 



KINBERGABTEN TRAINING 119 
gestion the valuable principle it contains, 
and retain and assimilate that, not the garb 
in which it was clothed. 

Froebel himself gives the kindergartner 
repeated warnings on the dangers of disciple- 
ship, saying, " Again, a life whose ideal value 
has been perfectly established in experience 
never aims to serve as a model in its form, 
but only in its essence, — in its spirit. It is 
the greatest mistake to suppose that spiritual 
human perfection can serve as a model in its 
form. This accounts for the common expe- 
rience, that the taking of such external 
manifestations of perfection as examples, 
instead of elevating mankind, checks — nay, 
represses its development." 

Montaigne speaks of the " indiscreet 
scribblers " of his time, who laboriously quote 
whole pages from ancient authors "with a 
design by that means to illustrate their own 
writings ; " but, he says, this " infinite dis- 
similitude of ornaments renders the complex- 
ion of their own compositions so pale, sallow, 
and deformed that they lose much more than 
they get." 



120 KINBEBGABTEN TRAINING 

Tlie fvirther the principle of imitation, of 
feeble following after, is continued, the more 
noteworthy are its evil effects. It is like a 
child's first writing-copy, which he labori- 
ously traces down the slate. He looks each 
time at the last line he wrote, not at the 
model at the top, and so it happens that the 
fourth line has already lost much of its 
resemblance to the original and is deciphered 
only with difficulty, while the line at the 
bottom is a succession of meaningless strokes. 
Kindergarten training is often like the 
writing on the slate, carried out with patient 
labor, but, ah, how woefully different from 
the original it follows ! And when this 
imitation is followed by another imitation, 
then indeed it becomes like the last row on 
the slate, absolutely meaningless, had one 
not seen the model somewhere. 

Miss A. perhaps is a most successful 
kindergartner. She brings a " pair of fresh 
eyes " to her work ; she is original, independ- 
ent, a student, and a thinker. Her success 
is spread abroad, her kindergarten is visited 



EINDERGABTEN TRAINING 121 
and admired. By and by some one comes 
and begs that Miss A. will give her a course 
of kindergarten training. Miss A. is modest, 
has never thought of such a thing, and 
declines the honor, but other persons come, 
and still others, and ultimately she is per- 
suaded to undertake a class. She does the 
work with her might ; she studies and she 
thinks. She makes mistakes, for she is a 
woman, therefore human ; but the interpre- 
tations of Froebel which she gives are the 
outcome of her own thought and experience 
and study ; her instruction is authentic ; it 
is fresh, suggestive ; it is the result of con- 
viction. Her "originality grows by pro- 
gressive deepening of insight into the causes 
and motives of the thing imitated, and with 
the ascending comprehension of means and 
purposes." Her work succeeds as a matter 
of course, and her first class leaves her 
sheltering wing, filled with enthusiasm and 
deeply convinced of the sacred nature of the 
duties they have undertaken. Miss B. is 
one of their number, and after a few years' 



122 KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 
experience she concludes to begin training 
work, not perhaps from any such pressure 
of public opinion as influenced Miss A., but 
because she honestly thinks she is fitted for 
it. But Miss B. is not a thinker ; she uses 
Miss A.'s commentaries, confident that there 
can be nothing better. She remembers how 
strongly they stirred her growing sjiirit, but 
forgets that they can never be delivered at 
second hand with the same enthusiasm and 
conviction, forgets also, or has never learned, 
that " imitation can never go above its level " 
and that " the imitator dooms himself to 
hojDcless mediocrity from the very outset." 
She uses all Miss A.'s practical methods, 
most of which fit her but poorly, and, be- 
cause she does not feed the flame of oriffi- 
nality and independence which God gave to 
her, it smoulders down and out into dead, 
gray ashes. She is earnest, she is conscien- 
tious, but she is killing the spirit with the 
letter. She might have done good work had 
she developed her own power, her own gifts, 
but as she merely repeats the opinions of 



EINDERGABTEN TRAINING 123 
another, she fails to impress her class with 
the holiness of the ground on which they 
tread. 

Close upon Miss B.'s heels follows Miss 
C, who is probably the least hopeful mem- 
ber of the class, and who begins to teach 
others long before she has digested her 
experience as a student. 

With lightning rapidity Miss D. arrives 
upon the scene. Introduced to kindergarten 
work by Miss C, she naturally fails to look 
upon it in a serious light. She sees in it an 
agreeable and easy way of earning a live- 
lihood, and immediately seeks for others 
around whom she can wreathe her octopus 
arms, and to whom she can impart the 
tricks of the trade. 

Now indeed is the writing blurred and 
meaningless; but Miss E. turns the slate 
over and begins work on the other side, and 
it is probable that in remote mountain vil- 
lages and solitary hamlets her pupils, Misses 
F., G., H., I., J., and K., are now buying 
slate-pencils and preparing to write. 



124 KINDERGABTEN TRAINING 

The undoubted fact has not here been 
touched upon that Miss A. frequently has a 
pupil a hundred times more gifted than her- 
self. Once taught to use her eagle wings, 
she soars to regions far beyond her teacher's 
reach, and her flight is a swift onward rush 
of power, strength, and inspiration. 

Nor can it be denied that Miss B., who is, 
after all, careful, conscientious, and pains- 
taking, succeeds now and then in giving the 
key of the universe to some eager soul who 
uses it aright and unlocks for herself and 
others the stores of wisdom that lie hidden 
therein. 

But we may be assured, with all assur- 
ance, that Misses C, D., and E. have never 
helped one struggling life, but have only 
falsified and held up to scorn an educational 
idea which, ^hen properly interi^reted, is one 
of truth, beauty, and righteousness. 

Why may we not establish a Pre-Ra]3ha- 
elite Brotherhood of Kindergartners, and, 
casting aside all the traditions, the preju- 
dices, the rumors, the hearsay evidence in 



KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 125 
regard to the Froebelian principles, go back 
to the fountain-head and once again drink 
deeply there ? 

In the old days before Raphael, each 
artist, musing in his solitary cloister, or 
pacing the narrow streets of his walled city, 
developed his powers in quiet and in silence, 
and without influence laid upon him from 
without. If he sang, or painted, or carved, 
it was but the flowering of his powers of 
expression, which had slowly grown and 
budded without artificial stimulus. What- 
ever the character of the creation, it must 
have been authentic, for the artist had only 
himself to imitate. 

In our complex, crowded modern life such 
work is no longer possible ; we must touch 
others and be influenced by them ; we must 
" do good and communicate," but whenever 
the kindergartner writes and speaks on the 
principles of Froebel, or seeks to impart 
them to others, let her assure herself that 
she does it with authenticity, that her inter- 
pretations, whatever they may be, are her 



126 KINDERGARTEN TRAINING 

own, the fruit of her study and experience, 
and therefore entitled to consideration. 

We have perfected many of the details 
of Froebel's system, and shall perfect more ; 
we have pruned in one place, have added in 
another, and have discarded some features 
which no longer seemed essential ; but we 
have not yet improved upon the principles 
of the discoverer. 

A devoted study of those principles, car- 
ried on sometimes without the aid of com- 
mentators or commentaries, a voyage on our 
own account into the realms of truth, will 
ever give us fresh stores of enthusiasm and 
inspiration. 



THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

" Properly thou hast no other knowledge but what thon 
hast got by working." 

Carlyle concludes his chapter on the 
" Everlastino; Yea " with the words : " Pro- 
duce ! Produce ! Were it but the pitifulest 
infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce 
it in God's name ! 'T is the utmost thou 
hast in thee ; out with it ! Get leave to 
work in this world, — 't is the best you get 
at all ; for God in cursing gives us better 
gifts than men in benediction. God says 
' Sweat for foreheads,' men say ' Crowns ; ' 
and so we are crowned, — ay! gashed, by 
some tormenting circle of steel which snaps 
with a secret spring. Get work. Be sure 
'tis better than what you woi'k to get." 

The uplifting of labor — it is a common 
thought and phrase to-day — depends largely 
on the uplifting of the laborer, that is, upon 



128 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

qualifying him for service that shall enno- 
ble, as every craft exercising thought, intel- 
ligence, and skill necessarily tends to do. 
Not long ago a very forcible and searching 
address upon this topic was made before 
a Charity Conference by a plain, practical 
business man who was not too plain, and 
was yet sufficiently practical, to see the sub- 
ject in a comprehensive way, and to dis- 
cover among other things how absolutely 
the whole spirit of kindergarten work is in 
line with the best thought of the day upon 
the question. 

The host of drudges, as Carlyle calls them, 
can now do only drudgery ; so, in servile toil 
life wears itself away, and the ranks of the 
feeble, the dull, the vicious, the diseased, the 
criminal, are constantly replenished. 

Our business man remarked, among other 
things, — and all who deal with the problem 
of want in our great cities know that he 
was right, — that the reason the very poor 
are unable to secure work above drudgery 
is largely because they are fit for nothing 



THE GOSPEL OF WORK 129 

better, and thus they drag down labor of 
every grade, and heavily clog the wheels of 
the social mechanism. This fact has long 
been so keenly felt by thinking people that 
attention has for some time past been di- 
rected to the necessity of the education of 
labor, and art schools, schools of design, 
manual training-schools, and even the com- 
mon schools in some of their later features 
have begun to supply the need. 

Valuable as all these educational institu- 
tions are, they yet lack much, not only in 
that they are sporadic, rather than univer- 
sal, — for a few children, not for all, — but 
in that they lack a proper foundation. They 
come much too late in the lives of most 
young persons submitted to their influence 
to do the good they might have done under 
happier circumstances, for probably, in too 
many cases, muscles have become stiff and 
hands awkward, while aesthetic taste is past 
the best formative period, and mental hab- 
its, difficult to change, have already been 
partially fixed. 



130 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

We who believe in the kindergarten 
consider that if labor is to be successfully- 
raised, the lever must be pushed well under 
at the very bottom of the weight, and then 
the force applied, and we also believe that 
Froebel has given us the proper implement 
for the task, and shown us how to use it. 
It seems to us in our experience among 
little children that the kindergarten is the 
greatest of all instrumentalities for pro- 
ducing originative, thoughtful labor, and we 
note that it sometimes literally seems to 
make, out of most unpromising material, 
too, judgment, quick sight, subtle touch, the 
sense of beauty, and creative ability, — all 
powers which, when once developed, forever 
lift manual labor above the level of mere 
mechanical toil. 

The following verse is written above the 
doors of the St. Louis Manual Training- 
School : — 

" Hail to the skillful, cunning' hand ! 
Hail to the cultured mind ! 
Contending for the world's command, 
Here let them be combined ! " 



THE GOSPEL OF WORK 131 

The same words might fitly be set over 
the entrance to every good kindergarten, 
although another line, — 

" Hail to the loving, helpful heart ! " 

would really be needed to make the verse 
fully comprehensive of our purposes. 

Laying aside for a time the distinctive 
and special value of the kind of work 
given in the kindergarten and its value as 
early manual training, we cannot fail to see 
its general bearing upon the formation of 
habits of industry. 

If the kindergartner has the art to pro- 
vide the right conditions for their growth, 
the virtues of neatness, order, economy, and 
carefulness flourish with us as in their 
native air. 

The normal child is never unhappy if he 
has sufficient and suitable occupation, for to 
be idle is against the very constitution of 
his nature. In the kindergarten he is al- 
ways busy and therefore, generally speak- 
ing, always contented and joyous. The 
striking peculiarity of the good kinder- 



132 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

garten — one that never fails to impress 
the novice and the casual visitor, as well as 
those grown old in the service — is the atmo- 
sphere of happiness diffused throughout the 
room. It is exceptional to see a child 
among the company who is anything but 
absorbed and happy in his work, and the 
removal of that work is one of the severest 
penalties that can be inflicted upon the 
small evil-doer. 

Habits of obedience to law must care- 
fully be cultivated before the children can 
be persuaded cheerfully to give up their 
occupation, whatever it may be, at the ex- 
piration of the short work-period, and at 
Christmas time, or other festival season, the 
teacher must constantly be on the alert, lest 
the spirit of industry exceed its proper 
limits and become a delirium. Under wise 
guidance, the child trained according to 
Froebel becomes not only industrious, but 
self-helpful also, and a sure test of the fit- 
ness of the kindergartner for her vocation 
is whether or not her pupil comes up to this 



THE GOSPEL OF WOEK 133 

standard. If she has succeeded, the child 
is not only busy and happy under her in- 
fluence, but busy, happy, and resourceful at 
home, a famous mother' s-helper, originator 
of delightful games, and source of fasci- 
nating employment to lesser ones of the 
flock. 

Froebel had no mind, however, that his 
gospel of work should be preached in the 
kindergarten only, for he notes in all his 
writings, and particularly in " The Educa- 
tion of Man," the instinctive (and some- 
times exceedingly troublesome) desire of 
the child to extend his feeble help to what- 
ever household occupation may be going on, 
and he urges parents, by all that they hold 
sacred in the nature of that child, and by 
all their hopes for his future, to cherish this 
desire, to afford opportunities for its grati- 
fication, lest once suppressed it arise no 
more. To do this, to think of small ways 
in which a small person may be helpful, or 
at least think he is helpful ; to resist the 
temptation to send him into the garden or 



134 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

into the nursery — anywhere out of the 
way, when household work is going on — 
often costs great pains and trouble, which 
is only to be cheerfully borne by taking a 
long, refreshing look into the future and 
thinking of the immense labor thereby 
saved at the other end of the line. Alas, 
it is so difficult to live with the children 
and resist the temptation to substitute some 
other preposition for that small, significant 
word. 

There is still another phase of the gospel 
of work as preached by Froebel, — one much 
more technical, quite distinct from the habit 
of cheerful occupation I have dwelt upon, 
and more closely related, perhaps, to the 
uplifting of labor. 

It is probably conceded by every one who 
has taken thought of the matter at all, that 
manual skill is acquired to a considerable 
extent in tlie kindergarten, notwithstanding 
the youth of the pupils, and that it is a 
valuable acquisition nobody appears to 
doubt, though it would be interesting to dis- 



THE GOSPEL OF WOBK 135 

cover for what reasons it is so considered. 
The answers to the question would of course 
be many and varied, according as the sub- 
ject is seen from this or that standpoint. 
One person would say, possibly : " These 
children have hands, and many of them will 
be dependent upon the use of them for sup- 
port ; therefore train them in the indus- 
tries, the members of the poorer classes 
particularly." 

Such reasoning is sufficiently good, per- 
haps, as far as it goes, though the poor of 
this year may be the rich of fifteen years to 
come, and the rich of to-day may be, by and 
by, among the poorest. 

Others say : " Idle fingers are the devil's 
tools. The children's hands will be em- 
ployed in any case, and if we do not furnish 
useful occupation, mischief will be the alter- 
native." 

Very true, we answer, although not so 
far-reaching a view of the question as might 
be desired. 

Still another person might reply, and he 



136 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

would lie right, we believe: "These little 
children have hands capable of becoming ac- 
tive, powerful instruments of an active, in- 
telligent, self-determining will ; therefore, in 
order that the human creature be conscious 
of his capabilities in all directions, and be 
able to exjjress his ideas in other ways than 
by words alone, the hands must be trained, 
and the best tangible results will follow." 
But these tangible results are only second- 
ary, it must be understood. It is the higher 
meaning of labor which we believe to be the 
most valuable acquisition to children. It is 
as Alice Wellington Rollins said: "We are 
really to aim at results only as a dog aims 
at catching the stick his master has thrown 
for him. He does not care for the stick ; 
what he likes is the running." 

Each tangible result of kindergarten work 
or action is only a symbol of something more 
valuable which the child has acquired In 
doing it. The finished product is not half 
so much a matter of pride as the conscious- 
ness of power to create, for the kindergarten 



THE GOSPEL OF WOBK 137 

is not, and was never intended to be, an in- 
fant industrial school, although we believe 
that it forms a basis for a rational system of 
education from which work is not excluded. 

Dr. W. N. Hailmann says : " The train- 
ing of the hand is an essential need of 
education, because — 

" 1. The hand is the instrument by which 
man controls, modifies, and prepares sur- 
roundings for use. 

" 2. Because the hand is the medium by 
which the internal (mind) is brought into 
living, actual connection with the external 
(matter). 

" 3. Because the hand is the organ of the 
plastic expression of ideas." 

The recognition of practical activity as 
an integral part of education is one of the 
salient truths of Froebel's system. Many 
educators had previously attached value to 
manual exercise and handicraft of various 
kinds, but rather as parts of physical train- 
ing and technical preparation for life, espe- 
cially among the poorer classes ; but with 



138 THE GOSPEL OF WOEK 

Froebel all outward training had an inward 
correlative : some mental faculty was always 
to be consciously brought into play to be 
strengthened and directed aright, while the 
limbs were gaining dexterity and vigor. 

He did not, in fact, value manual work 
for the sake merely of making a better 
workman, but for the sake of making a 
more complete human being. 

While the kindergarten trains the hands 
of little children to express their thoughts 
and fancies skillfully, and, so far as their 
capabilities go, with accuracy, it trains with 
equal care their powers of language as 
another means of expression. The kinder- 
garten child may be better prepared than 
others for industrial pursuits, but he is also, 
we believe, better prepared for all future 
life, whatever it may be, inasmuch as his 
powers and faculties have received equal 
and harmonious training. 

Our system of public instruction has, up 
to the present, generally begun with the 
abstract, with which it should close, and 



THE GOSPEL OF WORK 139 

this procedure is obviously in the highest 
degree irrational, particularly for the mass 
of the people whose task in later life is 
work that must be productive. Any system 
of education which leaves the hand entirely 
out of the question must therefore be griev- 
ously in error, although manual training 
must never be suffered to supersede in any 
way the rightful claims of mental training. 
The first educational task is to make the 
child acquainted with the things of the 
material world which constitute the basis 
of the abstract, for, as Froebel says, " the 
A B C of things must precede the ABC 
of words, and give to the words their true 
foundations." Knowledge of concrete things 
can only be gained by handling them, and 
the formation and transformation of mate- 
rial is therefore for children the best mode 
of gaining this knowledge. Froebel's occu- 
pations offer all possible facilities for this 
experimentation, and give the activity which 
is necessary to childish powers, that they 
may not be lost for want of use. We place 



140 THE GOSPEL OF WOBE 

much greater stress upon fertility of inven- 
tion in all our work than upon jjerfection 
of execution, which indeed is hardly pos- 
sible or to be desired at this early age. 
There is no carelessness, it must be under- 
stood ; everything must be done, if not ab- 
solutely well, at least as well as the child 
can do it, but what we consider the impor- 
tant matter is " not so much that he shall 
do the right thing, as that he shall like 
doing the right thing." 

All the kindergarten exercises are closely 
related one to the other, and the work- 
materials in every case supplement and 
translate one another, for Froebel's great 
hope for education is in unification of 
thought and deed and life. The kindergar- 
ten is intended to be an organic whole, and 
Froebel pleads for unification of thought 
and unification of life by means of the uni- 
fication of the materials of thought and 'uni- 
fication of the preparation for life. An 
all-sided connectedness gives an interest, a 
novelty, an intelligibility to school woi'k 



THE GOSPEL OF WORK 141 

that nothing else can give, and to this may 
be attributed the fact already noted, that 
there are surprisingly few sulky, indifferent, 
languid children in good kindergartens. 

" Life, action, and knowledge were to 
Froebel the three notes of one harmonious 
chord," and he says, therefore, " God made 
every child with hands as well as head, and 
if the brain depends upon systematic train- 
ing for its power, so does the hand, and so 
does the moral sense. The individual is 
bereft of power in proportion as any faculty 
is left untrained, and thus the will of God 
is in so far left unfulfilled." He believed 
in the cultivation of the habit of work as a 
resource and as a blessing, but in so edu- 
cating the worker in the totality of his 
powers from his earliest days, by training 
his hands, by cultivating his senses, by fur- 
nishing him with employment suited to de- 
velop the aesthetic faculties, that his labor 
would be no longer mechanical toil, but 
original, creative production valuable to the 
world, because stamped with the image of a 



142 THE GOSPEL OF WORK 

new individuality. This is, in brief, the 
view of the kindergarten as to the harmo- 
nious development of the powers of each 
human being, its conception of the training 
which must be given if he is to take his 
place in the world as an active, useful mem- 
ber of society. 

We do not claim, however, that the kin- 
dergarten has said the last word on the 
subject, that it has reached the ultima thule 
of educational progress, for we realize that 
it has but set out in the right direction. 
Froebel himself went no further than mod- 
estly to say, after half a century of study, 
observation, and experiment, " This is, in 
my judgment, about the way children should 
be trained." 



THE BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT 
TUMBLER 

" Happy must be his heart and mind 
Whose task it is to help his kind. " 

Theee is a twelfth century church legend 
which, for the good of humanity, should be 
issued in cheap tract form in all known 
languages and distributed to every grown 
person of both sexes, in this and other coun- 
tries. Had I my way, men should stand on 
street corners in all towns and cities, press- 
ing these pamphlets upon each passer-by ; 
and mounted colporteurs should gallop over 
every land, urging their swift steeds through 
rocky mountain defile and dry and desolate 
waste, that no poor hut, sequestered hamlet, 
or outlying homestead might be forgotten in 
the general distribution. 

More than this, I would, could I find a 
few faithful followers, engage to robe my- 



144 BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 
self as a minstrel, and with my lute wander 
the world over, telling the tale in every 
spot where an audience of two persons could 
be gathered together. These two, or half 
of them, at least, I should hope straight- 
way to enroll into a general association, to 
be known as the Brotherhood of Saint Tum- 
bler, — a devoted band ready to lay down 
life itself for its beliefs, and jDledged to 
expound them throughout the world. For 
myself, as the promoter of the order, and 
therefore presumably most conversant with 
its principles, I should reserve a special 
field, now white for the harvest, — say in 
Russia, Germany, and the Scandinavian 
countries, and as I swept my lute in the 
principal marts of traffic, tliis would be, in 
brief, and divested of the minstrel's arts, 
the substance of my tale. 

Once upon a time, — long ago, God 
knows, for those were other days and other 
people, — there dwelt afar in France a 
strolling mountebank, a juggler, a circus 



BROTHEBHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 145 

dancer, a tumbler, — what you will, — who 
made his living among the kindly country 
folk by the various tricks of his calling. 
He was a simple, merry fellow, who danced 
and tumbled for pure joy of life and delight 
in the world, and wherever he went, a trail 
of song and laughter followed him. Chil- 
dren shrieked with delight and toddled into 
the street, clapping their fat hands when 
they saw his bright dress and his glittering 
spangles, and staid fathers stopped their 
work, and mothers ran with babies to the 
doors, that they might catch the sparkle of 
his eyes and the gleam of the white teeth 
behind the laughing lips, as he tumbled in 
the dust. His merry heart made a cheerful 
countenance in all who saw him ; his pre- 
sence was a continual feast, and the few 
coppers men threw him for his capers would 
have been well spent had they been gold 
pieces. 

Now this poor tumbler had a heart full of 
tender faith and reverence, and seeing how 
valuable men deemed the simple talents God 



146 BROTHEEHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 
had given him, he resolved to offer them up 
in thanksgiving to the source from whence 
they came. So he sought out an ancient 
monastery, and being admitted there as one 
of the ministering brothers, resolved to 
spend the remainder of his life in worship 
of the Queen of Heaven. 

But now, alas, for the first time he felt 
his inferiority, for while priests, deacons, 
and sub-deacons all mi^ht eng^aoe in the 
religious services, he, ignorant of books or 
letters, had no part among them. He wan- 
dered disconsolate through the old gray 
building, and at last in a desolate crypt 
found a forgotten altar and a dusty image 
of the Virgin set upon it. 

Here was an opportunity for service, 
alone and unseen, free from the criticism of 
his learned fellows ; what could he do here 
to pleasure the Blessed Lady ? Ah, he 
knew nothing save the tricks of his trade, 
but sweet mothers and innocent little ones 
had always smiled upon them, and why 
should not the ever holy Mother, friend of 



BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 147 

children, accept tliem, smiling also, if lie 
but performed them with the full perfection 
of his art ? So he threw his robe upon the 
damp stones, and in the silent dusk, before 
the deserted altar, began his leaps, his con- 
tortions, and his somersaults with all the 
ardor of religious enthusiasm. 

Day after day, in these incongruous sur- 
roundings, the strange, silent, grotesque 
service was continued, until the poor tum- 
bler, half fainting with exhaustion, fancied 
at last that he saw the parted lips of the 
Virgin smiling upon him. Overcome by 
fatigue and emotion, he sank into a death- 
like swoon, and after a long interval, being 
missed by the brethren, was finally tracked 
to the lonely altar. They entered eagerly, 
tapers in hand, but their lights were dimmed 
by the moonlike radiance that overbrimmed 
the crypt, for, as they stood in awe and 
wonder, above the ignorant mountebank 
hovered the Blessed Queen of Heaven her- 
self, and a sky full of glorious angels. 



148 BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 

Now my hope would be that if I played 
my lute with art, if I told my tale with 
what grace God had given me, and at least 
with all the ardor of Blessed Saint Tumbler 
himself, that, as its last words left my lips, 
certain persons would force themselves 
through the crowd, trembling with eager- 
ness to be sworn into the order. I should 
receive them gladly, but I should know from 
their ready acceptance of the doctrine that 
they had probably practiced it unwittingly 
from their youth up, and while I sent them 
away at once as missionaries, I should de- 
vote all my eloquence to the Doubting 
Thomases among the crowd, who greatly 
needing the benefits of the order themselves, 
yet were skeptical of its value to the world. 

I should lay aside my lute, and we would 
reason together, and these are some of the 
things I should probably say, though they 
would scarcely be so didactic in form as 
they here appear. 

We talk a great deal about the wisdom 



BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 149 

of Solomon, my friends, but I wonder if we 
have any idea of how many and what sensi- 
ble things he had to say upon the value of 
cheerfulness. The " Mirth Cure," recently 
advocated by some French physicians, is 
really neither so novel nor so original as 
the critics would have us think, for it is 
thousands of years since the great king of 
Israel declared that a merry heart doeth 
good like a medicine. Nor is Solomon the 
only famous writer who upholds the Mirth 
Cure, for Horace and Milton and Cervantes 
and Shakespeare, especially Shakespeare, 
have scores of wise and brilliant things to 
say about that " merriment which bars a 
thousand hai-ms and lengthens life." That 
this statement in regard to merriment is 
true to scientific fact, and not merely a hazy 
poetic generality, is provable enough, and 
any one of us could doubtless furnish a 
dozen instances in point, were such required 
to support the argument. It is possible 
that ^ome of the marvelous healing ad- 
duced by the mental scientists is near akin 



150 BBOTHEBHOOI) OF SAINT TUMBLER 
to that performed by the Mirth Cure, for 
the peculiar beliefs of these devoted people 
certainly seem to produce in them a marked 
serenity and joyousness of disposition, beau- 
tiful to see in an anxious and troubled 
world. And again, still looking at the 
subject from the standpoint of self, tomes 
might be written on the value of cheer- 
fulness to the human mind, of the healthy 
glow it diffuses over thought, of the sweet 
sanity of contemplation it makes possible, 
of the sunny mental tone it engenders, vig- 
orously shining away clouds of depression 
and trouble that threaten permanent injury 
to the sensitive climate of the brain. 

But can we think of the subject from the 
standpoint of self alone? Is it not altruistic 
in its very nature ? Was not Dry den quite 
right when he said : — 

" Nature, in zeal for human amity, 
Denies or damps an undivided joy ; 
Joy is an import ; joy is an exchange ; 
Joy flies monopolists ; joy calls for two." 

Can a real gayety of heart, one that 



BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 151 

wells up from within, be pent in one's own 
breast? Must it not gush out, like the 
spring itself, for the refreshing of every 
wayfarer ? 

Is it not true, in Stevenson's words, — he 
to whom joy was a religion, — that by being 
happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the 
world, which remain unknown even to our- 
selves ? That gallant spirit, frail, suffering, 
weighted with pain and weakness, and yet 
making so brave a fight, presenting to the 
world so serene and undaunted a front, fur- 
nishes a fit text indeed from which to 
preach a sermon on cheerfulness, — one 
which should put to shame the grumbler 
and the misanthrope. 

Is not joy, — for these are all merely con- 
versational suggestions, to be filled out by , 
the hearer, — is not joy infectious and con- 
tagious also ? Think of a skylark caroling 
up into the mist, of the fire-glow on a rainy 
day, or better still, of a baby's smile and 
the light that comes into every face as, 
carried through a crowded car, the sunny 



152 BEOTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 

glance shines backward over the mother's 
shoulder. It is one of the commonest inci- 
dents of every-day life, this, for babies are 
common enough, and fortunately, on their 
bright faces, smiles are equally so. It is 
obvious that this spontaneity of joy must 
decrease with age and experience and trou- 
ble and knowledge of the heavy mysteries 
of life, but need its sources dry away alto- 
gether, or is there not some fount from 
which they may be replenished ? 

He is fortunate to-day who holds the 
power to make people laugh, if only they 
laugh at wholesome things and thoughts. 
We can always find something to weep for, 
without overmuch labor, but cause for mer- 
riment must frequently be sought outside 
ourselves and with difficulty. He who 
looks for it in the literature of the day, 
however, will often have his labor for his 
pains, for a strain of morbidity and sadness 
breathes through much of it, and it is only 
necessary to bring many a so-called cheerful 
book to the test of the sick-room to dis- 



BROTHEBHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 153 
cover how lamentably it comes slioi't of its 
rejDutation. It is so easy to win a name for 
brilliancy by writing with the pen of the 
cynic ; the pessimist can be so original at 
such slight expense that it is the less won- 
der that the style is so popular a one. It 
is difficult to be witty without being sarcas- 
tic, and difficult to be funny except at other 
people's expense. The disagreeable things 
are always sharpest and most trenchant, — 
else, why does Polly remember the " swear- 
words" so easily? 

And here one takes thought of the chil- 
dren again, who cannot indeed be long out 
of mind in such a book as this. There are 
no words, it seems to me, that can fitly esti- 
mate the worth to them of a companionship 
which is full of this buoyancy, this light- 
heartedness, this simple gayety. An emi- 
nent speaker on education has lately said 
that in the days to come, no cynic, pessi- 
mist, or morbid person will ever be given a 
teacher's appointment, and all lovers of 
children will ardently hope for the fulfill- 



154 BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 
ment of the proj)becy. These little ones 
are too sensitive, too impressionable, to be 
exposed to the influence of melancholy, 
which, like the chill darkness of a cellar, 
inevitably blanches and blights every fresh 
bud of mind and soul. We know well 
enough that sunshine is an absolute neces- 
sity of growth, but we sometimes forget 
that moral and mental sunshine are in- 
cluded in this essential. 

Happiness in childhood, and this is not 
sentimentality, but the dictum of the scien- 
tist, is fundamentally necessary to develop- 
ment. Pains and fears and anxieties all 
repress growth, say our modern psycholo- 
gists, and it has been clearly proved that 
nervous shocks, great griefs, distresses of 
any kind, suspend some of the vital pro- 
cesses for a time. 

It has been shown by careful medical 
observations that the physical results of 
depressing emotions are similar to those 
caused by bodily accidents, fatigue, chill, 
partial starvation, and loss of blood. Birds, 



BBOTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 155 

moles, and clogs, which apparently died in 
consequence of capture, and from conditions 
that correspond in human beings to acute 
nostalgia and " broken heart," were exam- 
ined after death as to the condition of their 
internal organs. Nutrition of the tissues 
had been interfered with, and the substance 
proper of various vital organs had under- 
gone the same kind of degeneration as 
that brought about by phosphorus, or the 
germs of infectious disease. The poisons 
of grief, of sorrow, of fear, of misery are 
more than names.^ 

Whatever may be said of the mysterious 
ministry of pain, of the value of sorrow as 
a discipline in maturity, we may be assured 
that such a discipline is not for childhood, 
which needs a free and joyous atmosphere 
where it may grow and expand all its possi- 
bilities. If it be wrapped about with misery 
and gloom, the growth of brain will be slow 
and that of body much impaired. 

We who have grown older can live, and 

^ Medical Record. 



156 BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 
must live oftentimes, under dark clouds and 
in a bleak environment, but it must not be 
forgotten that we have come to our full 
stature, and, like the deep-rooted forest 
tree, make less of chilling frost, of ice and 
snow and tempest, than does the budding 
rose-bush in the garden. 

Ah, but this is all a matter of tempera- 
ment, you say. He who is born cheerful 
will remain cheerful; but he who comes 
into the world under an unlucky star must 
e'en remain so, and bewail his fate. 

Some part of this feeling is doubtless 
rooted in truth, just as there is no question 
that certain virtues are more easily prac- 
ticed than others by certain natures, and 
some can with difficulty be practiced at all. 
Part of the feeling is true, but how much of 
it? If as we are born so must we die, if 
our spots are as unchangeable as the leo- 
pard's own, then the whole scheme of the 
universe is wrong, and we are the blackest 
detail in the plan. But to believe this is 



BROTHERHOOD OF SAINT TUMBLER 157 

to disbelieve everything else, and that in 
itself is madness. . . . 



Good friends, my plea is ended ; let who 
will spealc now. 

Ho, ye ! stand forward, all who would join 
the Brotherhood of Saint Tumbler ! 



THE KINDERGARTEN IN NEIGHBOR- 
HOOD WORK 

"This bond of neighborhood is, after all, one of the 
most human — yea, of the most divine — of all bonds. 
Every man you meet is your brother, and must be, for 
good or for evil." 

In these days of social settlements, of 
neighborhood guilds, of friendly aid houses, 
of all wholesome, hel^^ful organizations 
based on the brotherhood of man, the free 
kindergartens feel a pardonable pride as 
they reflect that they have been in and of 
this work from the beginning. The kinder- 
garten is as yet but a grain of mustard seed 
which has scarcely begun to sprout ; but it 
is rooted in all good things, it is related to 
all forward movements, and these facts 
assure us that it is destined to grow until, as 
Froebel saw it in prophetic vision, it becom- 
eth a tree, so that the birds of the air come 
and lodge in the branches thereof. 



NEIGHBOBHOOD WOBK 159 

The development of the child in his three- 
fold relations with nature, with God, and 
with mankind is the first article in the kin- 
dergarten creed, and, as the little one is led 
to feel the last relation shij), all neighbor- 
hood life is touched upon. 

There is no other educational system 
which has this social basis, and therefore no 
other which is so well adapted to serve as a 
foundation for all schemes of social regen- 
eration. The age of the children is such 
that the teacher must naturally regard them 
with a tender and protective feeling, and 
this attitude of mind being quickly felt and 
appreciated by the mother, the two women 
join hands in love for the little one, and 
the first links in the chain are welded to- 
gether. To and fro, between home and 
school, the children go, blessed little mes- 
sengers of good will; and, when the kin- 
dergartner calls to see the mother or the 
mother comes to advise with the kinder- 
gartner, they are not strangers, though they 
may never have met before, for so much has 



160 NEIGHBORHOOD WORK 

been reported about the one to the other 
that they seem quite like old friends. The 
ideal leader of the fi'ee kindergarten knows 
well every one of the families whose children 
are in her care ; she has visited every home 
in a friendly way, and thus gained an under- 
standing of the heredity of the child and 
his environment, which she could have 
obtained in no other manner. Seeing her 
genuine interest in the little one, her opinion 
of his abilities, her joy in his achievements, 
the parents learn to value him still more, and 
are drawn nearer together by their pride 
and love. 

Thus the neighborhood work begins, and 
to show how it has broadened out from 
thence* in a certain institution in the far 
West will be to show what is and must be 
the inevitable effect everywhere of Froebel's 
principles as applied to community life. 

In the first place, then, the babies who 
spend the years from three to six in close 
companionship with the kindergartner be- 
come dear, familiar friends, who will not 



NEIGHBORHOOD WORK 161 

and cannot be shaken off when they have 
graduated into the public schools. They 
return to bring their little brothers and 
sisters ; they drop in to learn how the young- 
lings are getting on ; they call often to see 
if they may do errands or give any sort of 
assistance ; they spend all possible holidays 
in the charmed atmosphere, and generally 
cling to the place like a devoted heap of 
iron filings to a very powerful magnet. 
What can be done with this army of de- 
voted followers ? thought the kindergartners 
in that Western institution long ago ; is 
there not some useful and pleasant work 
that we can give them ? 

The demand was urgent, and the supply, 
being eagerly looked for, did not fail in 
coming. The housekeeper's class, or kitchen 
garden, originated by Miss Emily Hunting- 
ton, of the Wilson Industrial School for 
Girls (New York), was described to the 
teachers, and they immediately formed a 
class, on the same lines, for girls from nine 
to fifteen years. This, with its simple 



162 NEIGHBORHOOD WORK 

instruction in household duties, its pleasant 
suggestions as to the best ways of washing 
and ironing, sweeping, dusting, and table- 
setting, brought them again in touch with 
the home, and another band of messengers 
sped to and fro on their kindly errands. 

But here were the boy graduates, a little 
shyer about calling to offer their services, 
but covering the steps and even ornament- 
ing the fences after school - hours, and, 
through want of occupation, often making 
themselves rather troublesome visitors. A 
generous friend came to their rescue, and 
four years ago the Boys' Free Library was 
opened on the ground floor of the building. 
Here, in bright, pleasant surroundings, from 
two to six o'clock every afternoon, from fifty 
to sixty of the neighborhood boys are wel- 
comed and provided with books, magazines, 
and quiet games. 

Now the hands of the teachers were 
clasped in those of the little children and 
of the older boys and girls, and they were 
necessarily in close relation with the home. 



NEIGHBORHOOD WORE 163 

But they wanted to do more for the mo- 
thers — some of them so patient and hard- 
working, so sweet and good ; others so 
vicious and hardened, and ignorant and 
dull. So the kindergartners asked these 
needy women to come to them regularly 
for friendly chats about the children, for ex- 
planation of Froebel's work-materials and 
the purpose of the songs and games, for 
bits of talk about home matters and simple 
addresses on such important subjects as 
children's diseases and remedies, children's 
food and clothing, methods of discipline, 
etc. These mothers' meetino-s were brisfht- 
ened with tea, and music, and conversation, 
and became a regular and most valuable 
feature of the institution work. 

The last year has seen two more very 
important additions to the social life of the 
neighborhood, — the opening of the Li- 
brary on two evenings a week for boys and 
young men at work by day, and the giving 
up of the rooms on Saturday afternoons to 
the girls, who have been provided with 



164 NEIGHBORHOOD WOBK 

cases of books especially suited to their 
needs. 

Nov/ the circle is almost complete, the 
kindergartners are in close relation with 
the little children, the boys and girls, the 
mothers and homes of the neighborhood, 
and their next outward reach mvist be to- 
ward the fathers, whom they have only 
touched as yet by proxy, as it were. 

Over three hundred and fifty human 
beings, of all ages, go in and out every 
week through the hospitable doors of this 
institution ; and in many cases the workers 
hope — nay, they knoio — that what is 
gained under that roof is a blessing to the 
entire neighborhood. 

It is but a little piece of the world's 
work, they realize ; they might have reached 
out further had they had more money, they 
might have done better had they been wiser, 
they might have done more nobly had they 
seen more clearly ; but they have done 
what they could, and they have few fears 
for the future. And so, — 



NEIGHBOBHOOD WORK 165 

" Here 's to the Cause, and the years that have passed ! 
Here 's to the Cause — it will triumph at last ! 
The End shall illumine the hearts that have braved 
AU the years and the fears, that the Cause might be 
saved. 
And though what we hoped for, and darkly have groped 
for, 
Come not in the manner we prayed that it should, 
We shall gladly confess it, and the Cause, may God 
bless it ! 
Shall find us all worthy who did what we could ! " 



CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. . 

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO. 



